Transatlantic Trade and the City: Conflicts of Sovereignty in the EU-wide Mobilisation Against TTIP and CETA

The present paper explores the complementary, highly distinctive and sometimes even contradictory ways in which the concept of sovereignty has been used in the transnational campaign against TTIP and CETA in the EU. On the basis of discourse-network analysis of media coverage of the anti-TTIP/CETA campaign collected through MediaCloud, I trace the different discursive coalitions in the campaign against these seminal trade agreements. Theoretically, I follow the recent conceptual distinction between four types of sovereignty – national, supranational, parliamentary and popular (Bickerton, Brack, Crespy and Ramon, forthcoming). I show that while radical right actors in a variety of country contexts opposed TTIP and CETA on the grounds of the agreements’ infringement of national sovereignty, radical left actors focused much more on the dangers TTIP and CETA pose to parliamentary and popular sovereignty, in particular. What is more, there were important national differences. Green and left opponents of TTIP and CETA in Germany for example, saw the agreements as a threat to EU-wide standards and defended the right of the European Parliament and EU citizens in general to have their say in what were perceived as particularly secretive and undemocratic trade negotiations. Finally, building on and expanding further the conceptual scheme of Bickerton, Brack, Crespy and Ramon, the paper argues also that notions of regional sovereignty and even municipal sovereignty played a crucial role in opposing the transnational trade agreements. This became especially clear in Wallonia’s veto on CETA and in the EU-wide “TTIP-free zones” campaign that redefined sovereignty at the local level, taking inspiration from a nascent left muncipalist movement. All in all, by outlining and analysing the discourse coalitions in the campaign against TTIP and CETA, I show that different actors put forward different and sometimes even contradictory conceptions of sovereignty, contributing to a highly heterogeneous campaign, contrary to simplistic media images of “protectionists and scaremongers” opposing the agreements.