The European Union’s New International Investment Policy: Product of Commission Entrepreneurship or Business Lobbying?

Abstract

The article seeks to explain the emergence of the European Union (EU)’s international investment policy since the 1980s. The article develops two competing explanations. It evaluates whether the Commission acted as policy entrepreneur to consolidate the EU’s role in international investment policy or whether European business lobbied for the ‘brusselization’ of international investment policy making to ensure access to ambitious state-of-the-art international investment agreements. The article traces the EU’s involvement in international investment policy through history. It examines policy-making instances, which shaped the EU’s de facto competences in international investment negotiations and its legal competences under European law. It finds that Commission entrepreneurship promoted the EU’s involvement in international investment negotiations and ultimately ensured due to the procedural particularities of the Convention on the Future of Europe the extension of the EU’s legal competences. European business and the Member States did not promote the emergence of the EU’s international investment policy.