Historical Consistency in Ttip Rhetoric

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations have become the center of debate in EU trade policy, where the European Commission and civil society organizations are key actors. The main arguments in favor of TTIP emphasize its economic and geostrategic benefits. The main criticisms of TTIP focus on a different set of issues: its alleged negative impact on product safety and public policies. This paper ponders the issue selection by each side of the debate. We explore whether the reason certain issues have been chosen by opponents and by supporters can be explained by with ‘rhetorical path dependency’ that is, the results of rhetorical options previously adopted by the political actors involved.  To establish the validity of this historical consistency hypothesis we identify and compare the arguments used by opponents and supporters of trade liberalization since the mid-1990s. By so doing, this article evaluates the role of agency in interpreting the implications of deep integration and translating it into political mobilization.