The bilateralism/multilateralism debate and EU trade policy

The EU has signed a plethora of bilateral and regional agreements since its inception, as well as being a key player in the multilateral trade institutions. This binary trade strategy, combining multilateralism with bilateralism/regionalism has been characteristic of its external trade relations. Even during its attempt to “manage globalisation” through favouring the multilateral approach in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the EU continued to negotiate Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs). 

Yet, there are two major differences between the maelstrom of bilateral trade negotiations that the EU has launched since the mid-2000s and the agreements signed in the past. The first is that bilateral agreements up until 2006 served principally non-economic purposes. In the past, EU economic interests were served by multilateral agreements while neighbourhood and development objectives were pursued through bilateral or regional means. PTAs justified purely by economic interests are a trademark of the 21st century. The second difference is that the EU has sought to establish new-generation free trade areas (FTAs) with non-European developed countries. The agreement with South Korea entered into force in 2011 and, in 2013, the EU reached an agreement with both Canada and Singapore and started negotiations not only with the United States (US) but also with Japan. Is the EU’s new bilateralism endangering multilateralism?.