The Limits of Parliamentary Control of EU Common Commercial Policy or Realist and Institutionalist Perspectives on the Necessity of Ttip

The content of trade strategies and the effectiveness of their implementation depend on the structural attributes of domestic political institutions involved in relevant governance processes and the formal legal and informal institutions that govern their interaction in decision-making processes. It is in this way that the reform of the primary institutional framework of the EU in regard of its Common Commercial Policy by means of the Lisbon Treaty had, a priori, the potential to shape and alter the Union’s response to any given policy demand as opposed to policies delivered by an alternative institutional framework. Political institutions (notably since 2009 the empowerment the European Parliament in EU Trade and Investment Policy formulation) matter greatly. They structure the costs of political participation and transform domestic political economy configurations into specific policy responses. This shapes external action at different stages of the prescribed process in contrast to responses delivered by alternative institutional frameworks. In addition, it is the perception of the EU’s external political and economic environment that contribute to the shaping of policy demands and the ideational structure of trade strategies. Building on these premises, this paper examines how complementary realist and institutionalist perceptions of the EU’s geopolitical and geo-economic environment have considerably limited the potential exercise of EU parliamentary control of its Common Commercial Policy formulation. The paper employs the realist and institutionalist narratives arguing in favor of the necessity of TTIP as a case study that exemplifies the limitations of political control exercised by the European Parliament