An Earthquake in the making? How Geopoliticization is shaking trade politics in the European Parliament

The Geopoliticization of trade, which has been defined as the growing embeddedness of foreign security in trade policy, refers to a change in the framing of trade. This change in framing should result in two inter-related evolutions: first, there should be an increase in the overall salience of trade policy and second, there should be a change in the type of trade policy positions that different actors adopt. However, the extent and manner in which Geopoliticization affects political groups’ positions on trade in the European Parliament is dubious for several reasons. First, matters of national security would differ depending on the nationality of the MEPs, and the extent to which they would be able to shape their EP political groups’ positions using those national considerations might be limited. Second, Geopoliticization might simply be an additional motive used by EP political groups to defend their pre-existing positions on trade. And yet, trade has become an increasingly salient policy area overall; hence, it is important to understand whether security concerns have become ubiquitous in policy positions on trade and whether they lay the groundwork necessary for important changes in trade politics, and also more broadly in EP politics. As such, this paper assesses the following research question: “How and why has the use of Geopoliticization changed the positioning of EP political groups on trade policy?”. This paper argues that Geopoliticization results in the polarization of policy positions expressed by EP parties on trade, a polarization which does not occur along the left-right axis but rather along the pro-anti EU axis. The consensus-driven working culture of the European parliament has long been emphasized in the literature, a culture which has only solidified as the EP became a co-legislator. Politicization, and the subsequent increase in salience of EU-level legislative activities, changes this status-quo. It incentivizes MEPs to not only be more active, but also to break-off from the consensus-driven culture of the EP, expressing positions aimed less at building a constructive and cohesive EP position and more at following their constituencies’ demands. According to this rationale, a number of hypotheses can be developed about the impact of the Geopoliticization of trade on EP politics. There should be an increase in the frequency at which EP parties mobilize on trade, an increase in the frequency at which security concerns underpin those positions, an increase in the polarization of policy positions expressed on trade, and a shift in the prominence of different political fault lines in the EP. To understand the impact of Geopoliticization on EP parties’ positioning on trade, this article uses a computational text analysis. This method allows for a large number of documents to be analyzed, ranging from political manifestos, press releases, tweets and publications released by political parties, to interventions in EP debates, and plenary and committee amendments. In this way, the paper aims to analyze the longitudinal shift in the framing of trade in the European Parliament to better understand to what extent it has become more geopoliticized and why.