The EU and Agriculture in Multilateral Trade Negotiations – Defending Agricultural Exceptionalism and the State Assistance Paradigm

The aim of this thesis is to determine and explain EU behaviour in multilateral trade negotiations on agriculture. On the basis of past negotiations in the GATT an explanatory framework stressing ideas, interests and institutions and their role in upholding a policy paradigm is developed and then tested for the ongoing Doha Development Round of the WTO. It is found that the EU behaves in a „limited rational‟ way, trying to preserve an agricultural policy based on the state assistance paradigm but making it „WTO compatible‟. The defensive stance of the EU can be ascribed to the Commission‟s continued endorsement of the idea of agricultural exceptionalism and is often reinforced by the demands of agricultural interests and institutional features that allow for only incremental change and lock the EU into the position of the most protectionist member states.