Value promotion and europeanisation by EU trade agreements

Abstract

Promoting values of the European Union has been on the EU’s external trade agenda since the 1990s. The Treaty of Lisbon established a general framework for values and principles, requiring the Union to pursue these concepts in the whole range of EU external relations, including the Common Commercial Policy (CCP). Therefore, the operation of CCP is governed not only by traderelated concepts such as progressive liberalisation, but it also reflects on non-trade concerns – e.g. protection of human rights, fair trade, or sustainable development – as well. This inclusive character of CCP is anchored also in the new external trade strategy of the European Union (‘Trade for all’), which stresses the importance of trade agreements concluded by EU in promotion of values towards third countries. The paper aims at addressing a conceptual and a procedural question related to this context: First, what kind of values of the European Union integrated in trade agreements can lead to the Europeanisation of domestic legal order of the third countries; and second, how these concepts can be implemented, i.e. how the process of Europeanisation is taking place using the example of the human rights promotion.