Marja-Liisa Öberg

Project summary

The influence of third countries on the European Union’s legislative process: actors, mechanisms, objectives and effects on the autonomy of the EU legal order

The export of legal norms is a tool regularly used by the European Union in its relations with third countries. The EU’s normative power has once again come to the fore in the context of Brexit and the ongoing negotiations on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the EU and the United States. At the same time, the EU’s growing normative influence has resulted in greater influence by third countries on its decision-making processes.

 

Practical experience of the export of EU norms within the European Economic Area (EEA), the bilateral relationship between the EU and Switzerland, the accession process, and bilateral free trade agreements such as TTIP demonstrates that third countries can exercise significant informal influence over the EU legislative process. At the same time, the emphasis on protecting the EU’s autonomy in decision-making has meant that the export of norms has formally been regarded as a linear process, with rules flowing from the EU to third countries as recipients of the EU body of law, the acquis.

 

This project aims to explore the actual influence of third countries on EU decision-making by identifying and categorising the different forms this influence takes and examining the tensions between such influence and the EU’s decision-making autonomy. The project is expected to provide significant theoretical and practical insights into the interaction between third countries and the EU in the development of legal norms, as well as making an innovative contribution to the debate on the democratic legitimacy of the European Union.