United we keep on standing: The determinants of durable civil society coalitions on EU trade policy

In the past decade, EU free trade agreements (FTAs) stopped being the exclusive confine of executives and experts, as several negotiations became strongly politicized. While this can be attributed to different factors, there is widespread recognition that civil society organizations have been pivotal in raising awareness, increasing the salience of negotiations for a wider audience, and putting pressure on politicians to take action. To do so effectively, their joining together in coalitions has proven to be especially important. At the high point of the politicization of TTIP and CETA, broad coalitions of civil society organizations were active not only transnationally, but also within different Member States. After TTIP’s demise, many of these coalitions attempted to seize the moment and transform their ‘ad hoc’ TTIP-specific coalition into a general coalition on trade policy, aiming to work on different trade agreements, and even put forward alternative trade agendas. Nonetheless, there is considerable variation in the extent of visibility, group engagement, and activity of these coalitions across countries. On the basis of interviews with trade activists and organizations in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Austria, the aim of this contribution is to explore the determinants of this variation in the durability of civil society coalitions on EU trade policy. Doing so not only adds to our understanding of interest group politics on EU trade policy, but also contributes to explanations of differentiated politicization of EU FTAs.