The EU as an Exporter and Importer of Norms

This research is part of Prof. Marise Cremona 's research project
The Foreign Relations Law of the European Union: A Constitutional Perspective

This research examines a specific feature of the inter-relation of the EU and the international order: the role played in the EU’s foreign policy by those values which the EU claims as (in some sense) ‘its own’, and the legal instruments and processes through which values are both imported into, and exported from, the EU legal order.

The aim is not to discuss the nature and content, or the ‘European’ or universal character, of specific values. It starts from the position that in order to lead to concrete outcomes in its foreign relations, the ‘values’ which have a symbolic significance for the EU must find practical expression in legal norms. These norms, whether derived from the Treaties or imported into the EU legal order, may take on a foundational or constitutional character and thus become constitutive of the Union’s identity and its self-perception (and self-projection) as an international actor.

Basing itself on this identity the EU commits itself to ‘uphold and promote its values in its relations with the wider world.’ (Articles 2 and 3(5) of the Treaty on European Union as amended by the Treaty of Lisbon). Further, the EU participates increasingly actively in the process of developing norms at the international level, norms which it then integrates into its own legal order and which it also promotes in its relations with third states.

One specific aspect of this research is a contribution to the AHRB-funded research project on the Fair Trade Movement: Legal Support and Social Implications. This part of the project is an analysis, together with Dr Gracia Marin Duran, of the different approaches to the regulation of Fair Trade in EU Member States, the (potential) contribution of the EU to that regulation and the arguments for and against regulation at EU level, and indeed binding regulation at all.