The EU in the Global Investment Regime Commission Entrepreneurship, Incremental Institutional Change and Business Lethargy Routledge/UACES Contemporary European Studies Series

The European Union (EU) has emerged as a key actor in the global investment regime since the 1980s. At the same time, international investment policy and agreements, which govern international investment liberalisation, treatment and protection through investor-to-state dispute settlement, have become increasingly contentious in the European public debate.

This book provides an accessible introduction to international investment policy and seeks to explain how the EU became an actor in the global investment regime. It offers a detailed analysis of the EU?s participation in all major trade and investment negotiations since the 1980s and EU-internal competence debates to identify the causes behind the EU?s growing role in this policy domain. Building on principal-agent and historical institutionalist models of incremental institutional change, the book shows that Commission entrepreneurship was instrumental in the emergence of the EU as a key actor in the global investment regime. It refutes business-centred liberal intergovernmental explanations, which suggest that business lobbying made the Member States accept the EU?s growing role and competence in this domain. The book lends support to supranational and challenges intergovernmental thinking on European Integration.

This text will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners of European and regional integration, EU foreign relations, EU trade and international investment law, business lobbying, and more broadly of international political economy.

1. Introduction 2. European Integration Theory and the EU’s New International Investment Policy 3. An Introduction to International Investment and its Regime 4. An Overview of EU International Investment Policy-Making under the Treaty of Lisbon 5. The EU in Investment-Related Negotiations during the Uruguay Round 6. The EU in Investment-Related Negotiations on the Energy Charter Treaty 7. The EU in Negotiations on the Multilateral Agreement on Investment and the Singapore Issues 8. Investment Disciplines in European Free Trade Agreements 9. The Evolution of the EU’s Legal Competences in International Investment Policy 10. Conclusion

Johann Robert Basedow is a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, and an Assistant Professor for International Political Economy at the London School of Economics, UK.