Reversing the Gaze in EU Trade Policy: Communities, Hierarchies and Agency under Trade and Sustainable Development Chapters
Sustainability provisions in the European Union’s (EU) preferential trade agreements are typically attributed to the EU. The role of trade partners is often underexplored or even ignored. This article reverses the gaze, examining how trade partners and the EU engage under Trade and Sustainable Development (TSD) chapters. Drawing on 60 expert interviews, we juxtapose the perceptions of both sides regarding TSD negotiations and implementation, revealing similarities and differences. The EU sees itself as the primary proponent of TSD chapters and generally classifies trade partners into an in-group or out-group based on their perceived level of development and sustainability performance, employing a distinct governance logic for each group. Trade partners acknowledge the EU’s influence but still assert various forms of agency, including on fossil fuel subsidies, gender equality and indigenous peoples’ rights. The integration of trade and sustainable development is increasingly recognised as a shared goal. However, emerging trade-sustainability communities appear to be hindered by imbalanced policy objectives and adaptation costs, the perceived inappropriateness of 'harder' policy means and a disregard for distinct contexts. Our findings suggest that the EU’s and trade partners’ perceptions of TSD interactions are shaped by underlying spatial and temporal imaginaries. We propose two concepts – inclusive levelling and exclusive distancing – to describe how spatiality and temporality discursively influence the construction and delineation of trade-sustainability communities and thereby the governance of the trade-sustainability nexus.