The European Commission and International Trade Negotiations: A Principal-Agent Approach. IES WORKING PAPER 2/2011

Starting from the concept of delegation of power in external trade policy, this paper aims to investigate the dynamics surrounding the European Union’s position in international trade negotiations. The analysis centres on the role of the European Commission (the agent), which by means of Treaty-based delegation and as mandated by the Council (the principal) acts as the sole trade negotiator in the international sphere on behalf of the European Union (EU). The broader negotiating process is thus conceptualised as a threelevel game, where the Commission holds an intermediary position between the European and international levels and also interacts with the Member States in the Council. After an insight into the European decision-making process for external trade, the paper further analyses the Commission’s role during the multilateral trade negotiations of the Doha Development Round. By applying the principal-agent theory to international trade negotiations in general, and subsequently to the controversial agricultural negotiations, this paper seeks to investigate some of the potential sources of autonomy that the Commission can draw upon while upholding an EU position at the international level, in addition to the “hardball” job of balancing the interests of the Member States with those of World Trade Organisation (WTO) partners. Along these lines, the paper finally aims to contribute to the literature concerning agency autonomy in EU external trade relations but also to provide a better understanding of inter-institutional relations within the EU as they may unfold in practice.

The Criminalisation of Migration in Europe: A State-of-the-Art of the Academic Literature and Research. CEPS Liberty and Security in Europe No. 61, October 2013

In the last 30 years, a clear trend has come to define modern immigration law and policy. A set of seemingly disparate developments concerning the constant reinforcement of border controls, tightening of conditions of entry, expanding capacities for detention and deportation and the proliferation of criminal sanctions for migration offences, accompanied by an anxiety on the part of the press, public and political establishment regarding migrant criminality can now be seen to form a definitive shift in the European Union towards the so-called ‘criminalisation of migration’. This paper aims to provide an overview of the ‘state-of-the-art’ in the academic literature and EU research on criminalisation of migration in Europe. It analyses three key manifestations of the so-called ‘crimmigration’ trend: discursive criminalisation; the use of criminal law for migration management; and immigrant detention, focusing both on developments in domestic legislation of EU member states but also the increasing conflation of mobility, crime and security which has accompanied EU integration. By identifying the trends, synergies and gaps in the scholarly approaches dealing with the criminalisation of migration, the paper seeks to provide a framework for on-going research under Work Package 8 of the FIDUCIA project.