In Gothenburg on 9–10 March, ARENA postdoctoral fellow Guri Rosén will host an international workshop at the University of Gothenburg's Centre for European Research (CERGU).
The European Parliament and external relations
The Lisbon Treaty triggered a small revolution in the field of EU external relations by giving the European Parliament (EP) the power to veto international agreements. To date, it has done so on three occasions, first with SWIFT in 2010, a second time on the Fisheries Partnership Agreement with Morocco and the last time with Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) in 2012. Particularly the negotiations on ACTA attracted a lot of public attention, and some have claimed the EP’s veto to be a consequence of the strong public opposition. This resonates with one of the big fears among some member states that parliamentarians would contribute to politicize external policy, making it an even more unruly. Thus, focusing on the negotiation of international agreements, the main ambition of this workshop is to analyze how these processes of parliamentarization and politicization affect the EUs external relations.