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Parochial Global Europe
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n November 1992, European Union (EU) and United States trade negoti- ators met in the US President’s official guest house to resolve outstanding differences on domestic support for agriculture. The resulting Blair House Agreement paved the way for the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO), whose rules govern global trade. Decisions taken around the world about whether to cultivate genetically modified varieties of crops are influ- enced by whether the EU has approved that variety for sale, lest exports of the entire crop be barred from Europe’s massive market of over 500 million consumers. In an effort to pressure Iran into complying with the (nuclear) Non-Proliferation Treaty, the EU fully implemented on July 1, 2012 its embargo on the importation of petroleum products from Iran, affecting about one-third of Iran’s oil production. The Union’s prohibition on insur- ing Iranian oil shipments affected about 95 per cent of the world’s tankers.1 These snapshots illustrate the importance of the EU to the global governance of trade and the impact that its decisions can have far beyond its borders.
Europe’s trade policies matter because, despite the recent focus on the rise of Brazil, India, and particularly China, the EU remains the world’s largest market and trader.2 It is a prime driver of globalization: the Union remains in a far more powerful position, for a rich variety of reasons, to determine how globalization is governed than any of the rapidly emerging economies. Europe is widely thought to be in a state of decline, because of protracted sov- ereign debt crises in the Eurozone, a preference for expensive welfare states, and a declining birthrate.3 But Europe is going nowhere, for the foreseeable future, as a trading power.
Alasdair R. Young and John Peterson - Personal Name
1st Edtion
978–0–19–957990–7
NONE
Parochial Global Europe
Management
English
Oxford University Press Inc
2014
United Kingdom
1-305
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