The awkward unilateralist: explaining the EU's going it alone strategy in "trade-and-..." issues

The European Union has in a short time span initiated several measures that would unilaterally limit the access to its internal market depending on the domestic policies of third countries. Examples of such initiatives include the carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM), the foreign subsidies regulation (FSR), the international procurement instrument (IPI), the anti-coercion instrument (ACI), the enforcement regulation (ER) and the deforestation regulation (DR). This is surprising, as the European Union has long presented itself as a staunch promotor of multilateral cooperation in trade with the core aim of progressive trade liberalization. Moreover, in the not so distant past, similar attempts to make the access to the EU's market conditional upon the domestic policies of third countries had been successfully blocked by a pro-free trade coalition of actors within European institutions and civil society. How can we explain this "unilateral shift" in EU trade policy, manifested not in one single but a true salvo of autonomous trade defense instruments? And to what extent does this represent a genuine "paradigm change" in EU trade policy? This paper argues that this shift is the result of the failure by the EU to incorporate trade-and-... issues successfully in multilateral (WTO) and bilateral agreements, the economic rise of China, increasing geopolitical tensions and a shift in the preferences of powerful exporting interest in key Member states. These factors are interrelated and reinforcing. Significant as this shift is, in the terminology of Peter Hall it should be qualified as second- rather than third-order change, implying a change in instruments and tactics rather than policy objectives. Reciprocal trade liberalization remains the central goal of EU trade policy, but in the current environment the emphasis has shifted from unconditional liberalization towards more assertively enforcing reciprocity.