Trade Policymaking in the European Union: Institutional Framework

The Congressional Research Service, a department of the Library of Congress, conducts research and analysis for Congress on a broad range of national and international policy issues. Some of the CRS work is carried out specifically for individual members of Congress or their staff and is confidential. However, there is also much CRS compiled material which is considered public but is not formally published on the CRS website.

For that reason a number of other organisations try to keep track of these publications and make them publicly available via their own websites. Currently, ESO uses the following websites to track these reports and allow access to them in ESO:

EveryCRSReport.com
Federation of American Scientists (FAS)

In some cases hyperlinks allows you to access all versions of a report, including the latest. Note that many reports are periodically updated.Trade policy in the EU is made in the context of legal provisions provided by the 1957 Treaty of Rome. As part of this treaty, an institutional framework for the making of trade policy—common commercial policy—was established. Despite relatively few changes in the treaty base of the EU’s common commercial policy, its institutional framework has evolved over time as the scope of what constitutes trade policy has changed.

The roles and functions of key institutions — the European Commission, the Council of Ministers, subordinate bodies of the Council, the European Parliament, and the European Court of Justice–are described in this report. The actual process of how the EU makes trade policy is of growing interest to the United States as the EU continues to play a larger and more assertive role in the world economy. This report will be updated as events warrant.

• Primary Source

Federation of American Scientists (FAS): Congressional Research Service [CRS] Reports https://fas.org/sgp/crs/index.html

EveryCRSReport.com https://www.everycrsreport.com/

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