This week brings a step forward for the EU’s Global Europe strategy: the initialling of the Free Trade Agreement with Korea, which will take place on Thursday. The completion of the EU-Korea FTA has excited a great deal more interest in Korea than it has in the European Union. Yet the move is very significant for Brussels: it would be the EU’s first such agreement with a Pacific rim country, the EU’s fourth largest trading partner outside the European continent, and lead the way to similar deals with India, Latin America, and the Southeast Asian countries.
So is it finally in the bag? While odds are for a final signature early next year, there is an interesting snag to the EU-Korea deal, which is that thanks to the Lisbon Treaty, it will be the first EU trade agreement that will have to clear the European Parliament. Under the current institutional rules, which have served to pass free trade agreements with Mexico and South Africa, MEPs only need be ‘consulted’ on trade issues. Yet assuming Lisbon passes into effect on January first of next year, they will then exercise veto power, similar to that of the US Congress.
A nightmare scenario for the Commission, and advocates of Europe’s global economic integration more generally, is that the European Parliament could end up like its American counterpart: a veto-wielding organisation more attuned to the interests of corporate lobbyists than ordinary consumers and voters, and jealously opposed to foreign competition. A free trade agreement between Korea and the US has already stalled in the US legislature, with the House of Representatives refusing to upset unions and the country’s decrepit automotive sector. And on this side of the Atlantic, furious lobbying has already begun from Europe’s car industry, the ACEA (the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association), to prevent the EU deal passing. A sample was provided last week by its Secretary General, Ivan Hodac, in an EUObserver conference.
Could they succeed? Though the EPP-heavy European Parliament is more favourably disposed to trade than America’s Democrat-laden Congress, their automatic compliance cannot be taken for granted. A taste of the debate is to be found in Commissioner Ashton’s recent presentation before the Parliament, in which the tone of the debate was anything but supportive.
Given the relatively warm state of EU-Korea relations, it would beggar belief to see the Parliament try and send back a deal that has been in the pipeline for so long. As MEP David Martin noted in his intervention last month, ‘if the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers cannot move this agreement to a final signed agreement between Korea and the EU, we might as well send a note to DG Trade to stop negotiating all other free trade agreements, because, if we do not deliver on Korea, [we can] forget ASEAN, the Gulf States, [and] the whole other raft of FTAs we are trying to negotiate’.
#1 by Freeborn John on October 13, 2009 - 8:01 pm
It is a mistake to give the EU Parliament any powers. They represent nobody but themselves; no interest except their own institutional self-interest in yet more powers and perks.
#2 by Stefan on October 14, 2009 - 10:41 am
I wouldn’t be so pessimistic. In the past, the EU Parliament often voted in the interest of the European consumers. Last year, the EP pushed through a constraint of cell phone fees against the will of the telecom companies, just to name one example.
#3 by David Ben-Ariel on October 14, 2009 - 1:14 pm
It will appear to be in everybody’s best interests to make money. The pitfalls of politics will follow. Biblical prophecy reveals a European confederation of states – the top ten, a core group, a European engine – that have surrendered their sovereignty to one strong leader (under the influence of the Roman Catholic Church) and collaborating with industrialists, will become an economic, political and spiritual powerhouse that will charge the world.
#4 by Marcel on October 14, 2009 - 6:15 pm
@2
because price controls have always worked so well in the past… duh… it was just a propaganda excercise whereby the EU hopes the people will soon enough forget how undemocratic the EU is.
#5 by Martin Lukavec on October 14, 2009 - 10:51 pm
By giving more powers to the European parliament without taking any from the commission, the decision process was made more democratic (the parliament is directly elected, after all) but obviously less easy to get passed. And now it’s getting back, when we realize that Barroso’s enlightened commission suddenly has all these obstacles to go around. That’s the price for more democratic system.
#6 by George on October 15, 2009 - 1:08 pm
MEP’s want to be re-elected, their parties wnat to increase their share of the vote in this new more powerful assembly. I doubt any MEP regularly votes contrary to their national parties line on vital legislation such as this. If the EP votes this down its because the national parties are sufficiently against it. That might irk the national governments, but checks and balances tend to be a good thing in the long run.
If anything I would have thought that freeborn would apporve of a more powerful parliament, as the effect of it would almost certainly be to retard further integration.
#7 by Marcel on November 25, 2009 - 5:58 pm
@6
we cannot run the risk that a ‘stronger’ faux-parliament might actually further the unwanted cause of integration.
We the peoples do not want more political integration, we want less. And yes, I’ll take 27 referendums on that. If asked EEC or EU it is EEC that will win. And politicians know it which is why Merkel and Sarkozy and Barroso bullied governments into cancelling explicitly promised referendums on the undemocratic Lisbon treaty.