The EU's preferential trade agreements with Singapore and Vietnam: Market vs. normative imperatives

By negotiating Free Trade Agreements the EU aspires both to increase the competitiveness of its industry and contribute to sustainable development in the partner country. It pursues a flexible approach to norm promotion which aims at supporting developing countries in their attempt to adjust to international standards. Ideational and institutionalist scholars interpreted this approach as a manifestation of its normative power. We show that in the negotiations with Singapore and Vietnam the positions of the EU were not consistent with its declared goals, since they put stronger pressures upon Vietnam to adjust to regulatory standards. We explain this lack of consistency as the result of different patterns of interest group mobilization in the two negotiations. Those patterns, in turn, depend upon the bargaining power the EU has with single trade partners, competition between the EU and third countries, especially the US, and the structure of the economy of the trade partners.