Even though, for the past several decades, member states of the European Union (EU) have been derelict with their power to act as independent players in international trade negotiations, they have recently begun to recapture some of their lost trade sovereignty. (Kennett 1996) Neither the European Court of Justice 1994's opinion, nor the 1997 formal reform of trade policy process at Amsterdam delegated full negotiating power to the Commission over the so-called, new trade issues of services and intellectual property. Instead the member states accepted a hybrid form of decision-making to enable impromptu, rather than a structural, per se, delegation of jurisdiction. As such, this shows a shift in the perceived trade-off between economic interests and ideological prejudice on the part of key member states.

The question now arises as to who speaks for Europe? History has shown that there has been a sharp difference between political and economic realms in regard to Europe. In terms of international politics, member states speak for themselves. Yet, in contrast to the international political scene, international trade in the European Community was granted exclusive competence. (Wei

Member states who are opposed to exclusive competence fall under three broad categories. It is fair to say that France was at the helm of the sovereignty camp for ideological reasons, attributed to the fact of its strong support for aggressive liberalization during the Round and its high competitiveness when it came to services. Similarly, it is hard to understand why England joined this sovereignty camp for reasons other than the ideological. Britian had traditionally been one of the most liberal states in the EU, often battling against other countries veto's when it came to liberalization, especially in the industries of financial and telecommunication services. Germany on the other hand fits into the second category of states falling into the anti-exclusive competence c amp for both economic and ideological reasons. More than any other EU state Germany's regulators were highly protective of their powers. As well, during the '90's the trade ministry had not been converted to the free trade gospel in the area of telecommunications and banking. Ironically enough these are areas which had not been liberalized yet internally and did not seem competitive internationally. Nonetheless Germany was adapting to changes in the world economy with increasing competitive service industries. Therefore, it was above all else on ideological grounds that Germany was resisting transfer of sovereignty. Finally, there were those countries which were motivated by sectored concerns. Portgual, for instance opposed the Commision because of its handling of textile issues during the Uruguay Round.

On the other side of the spectrum, irrespectively of their economic competitiveness in services, countries such as Italy, Belgium and Ireland, with traditional pro-integration stances, backed the Commission fixedly. These countries recognized that without the negotiating umbrella of the whole Community, they would always be at the mercy of the EU's big trade partners

During the two decades following the Treaty of Rome, the Commission successfully negotiated on behalf of its members two major trade rounds under GATT, as well as countless bilateral trade agreements. (Devuyst 1995) When the new issues, such as intellectual property, crept up into the international trade agenda in the '80's, the foundations of the Community's trade competence began to get questioned. Due to the expansion of the world trade agenda onto policies traditionally not considered at the "border", but rather, "inside the state", forced an explicit internal EU debate on the issue of competence. Additionally, the Uruguay round was designed to introduce new issues to hand, such as intellectual property and trade related investment measures including services. These services ranged from the telecommunication infrastructure to professional accreditation and banking, these areas which had in the past fallen under domestic jurisdiction and where concerns about externalities, consumer protection and the public goods were generally more acute than for trade in goods. Therefore, the issue of trade delegation came to be framed as follows, who, of the member states or Commission, was responsible for negotiating these new issues depended on one's interpretation of the term trade policy, which was used in the Treaty of Rome. A political compromise seemed necessary, the Ministeral declaration launching the Uruguay Round at Punta del Este in 1986 was approved both by the Council and by member governments, postponing the question of competence until the end of the round. (Arnall 1996) Regardless of what the outcome was to be, the fact remained that there would be unity

Some common words found in the essay are:
Treaty Rome, European Commission, European Parliament, Community GATT, Additionally Uruguay, Rome Commission, Court Justice, European Community, EU Commission, Round Punta, trade policy, international trade, treaty rome, intellectual property, trade negotiations, trade agreements, trade agenda, international trade negotiations, uruguay round, exclusive competence, trade authority, issues intellectual property, agreements third countries, trade agreements third,
Approximate Word count = 2442
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page double spaced)