Trade Policy

This chapter examines the EU’s trade policy. While the policy is not completely common, it is with its Common Commercial Policy (CCP) — the EU’s term for trade policy — that the EU most resembles a state actor in external affairs, exercising an exclusive competence to negotiate accords on behalf of all EU member states in most areas of external trade. This requirement of the EU to act in a unified way in international trade negotiations, when coupled with the very considerable volume of external EU trade, makes the EU an extremely important international trade actor.