Market power Europe? Exporting EU disciplines on domestic services regulations through trade agreements

This chapter examines the EU’s attempts to use its new generation of deep and comprehensive free trade agreements (DCFTAs) to develop disciplines on domestic regulations on services. The first part provides an overview of the challenges countries face in addressing regulatory barriers to trade in services and discusses the extent to which these challenges are addressed at the multilateral and EU level. The second part uses the conceptualization of the EU as a Market Power Europe (MPE) as a backdrop to assess the EU’s practice of using DCFTAs to project its norms. The third examines the EU’s more recent attempts to use DCFTAS to externalize its own rules - notably the EU Services Directive. It argues that the EU’s current approach to negotiating disciplines on domestic regulation on services contributes to MPE and invites further reflection on the potential impact of the inclusion of such disciplines in trade agreements.