The European Parliament and the Trade and Sustainable Development (TSD) Chapters of the EU Trade Agreements

Article 218 TFEU, which governs the procedure for concluding EU Trade Agreements, suggests that the European Parliament (EP) is a marginal actor deprived of impactful powers of intervention during the procedure, compared to the Commission or the Council. Even though the EP has the right of information during the procedure and has to give its consent for EU Trade Agreements, Article 218(10) TFEU, which prescribes the Parliament’s right of information, is quite succinct: ‘The European Parliament shall be immediately and fully informed at all stages of the procedure’. It is left to the EP’s shoulders to give effect to its right of information and to constantly negotiate its concrete position in the institutional triangle, Commission-Council-Parliament. Against this backdrop, this paper aims to explore how the EP has become an established institutional player in the procedure for concluding EU trade agreements. Several EU Trade Agreements are taken as case studies, with a particular focus on one substantive part of these agreements to demonstrate the EP’s actual impact: the Trade and Sustainable Development (TSD) Chapters. Sustainable development is a fundamental value of the EU, which is also reflected in the external action and trade policy (e.g. Article 3 TEU/Article 207 TFEU). This value is a cornerstone for the EP, and the EP played a major role in promoting it in the EU Trade Agreements. The EP made good use of an entire arsenal of legal and political instruments, such as amending its Rules of Procedures, concluding interinstitutional agreements, and holding constant meetings with the Commission at the level of the INTA Committee. These had allowed the EP to become a redoubtable institutional player, being able to visibly influence both the procedure for concluding trade agreements by the EU and their content.