- What are the trade-off that the EU is prepared to accept in the future trade negotiations between economic objectives and non economic objectives (social and environmental norms) ?

- What kind of co-operation strategy should the EU pursue with developing countries in order to promote and defend efficiently a consistent and credible project of sustainable development at the international level?

- What are the procedures for good governance at the European level which would help improve the legitimacy of a European project for trade and sustainable development in face of the European public opinions and which would contribute to reinforce the European social and political cohesion?

• The first theme is dedicated to a theoretical debate over the concept of global public good and its usefulness in analysing global challenges and in providing guidance to develop a consistent, credible and legitimate global plan for trade and sustainable development. The objective is to assess the scope for the development of such a comprehensive multidisciplinary analytical framework, which could demonstrate the necessity to incorporate social and environmental considerations into economic decision-making. The following questions will be addressed: (i) what are the criteria for identifying the global public good which should be the object of an international negotiation (ii) what are the incentive and regulatory tools to manage global public goods (iii) what are the co-operation strategies between countries for an efficient collective action.

• The second theme will focus on the methodologies for assessing the process of trade liberalisation from a sustainability perspective. The methodological debate has rapidly included more political questions such as: accountability, participation of stakeholders in the assessment process, the use of SIAs as new trade conditionalities, the opportunity to develop a standardised assessment methodology at the international level. The debate over SIA also raises the issue of the role of expertise in defining criteria and of the role of procedural justice in assessment process. Three questions are of particular relevance : (i) the participation of the civil society: (ii) a standardised international SIA versus a flexible customised tool?: (iii) the opportunistic advocacy of SIA.
  
  
• The third theme addresses the more global issue of the architecture of the global system of governance. The issue here is to understand how to build an efficient, equitable and legitimate institutional architecture for the world economy and how Europe can contribute to that aim. Three issues will be envisaged: (i) the choice between setting-up an international financing mechanism for collective public good versus co-ordinating the decentralised production of global public good, (ii) the implementation of a legitimate and politically acceptable international mechanism for conflict settlement between parties and between parties and general interest (iii) the best procedures to structure the international decision-making process.

Legitimacy and acceptability of a European sustainable trade project

The content of the second sub-programme seeks to identify what are the constraints associated with the development of an integrated participatory policy-making process for sustainable trade at the European level. Two themes will be developed:

• The first theme addresses the issue of vested interests and resistance to trade and sustainable development reforms within the European Union and internationally. The objectives of the workpackage is to map out interest group strategies and to measure the scope for reform in various key sectors (fiscal rules, employment policies and labour rules, the agricultural sector etc.) in order to gain an insight into the following questions: (i) does the progressive building up of a European public space generate more rent-seeking behaviours? (ii) to what extent are the various European policy more or less subject to rent-seeking ? (iii) Can the recent emergence of massive multinationals fundamentally change this dynamic by divorcing the interests of powerful companies from the interests of one any particular country?

• The second theme is dedicated to civil society participation to the policy-making process: it addresses the issue of the European governance of the trade negotiation process. The objective is to understand how collective preferences about trade and sustainability are built up within Europe. Several questions will be addressed : (i) why did the NGO movement prove to be so successful in raising linkage issues such as the potential negative effects of trade for example on food security ? (ii) What is the role of networks in the European decision-making process ? (iii) What are the conditions of emergence of an integrated European opinion on sustainable trade ?

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DISSEMINATION OBJECTIVES

One of the objectives of the network is also to build increasing knowledge flows between research teams and we are hoping that the pre-announced objectives of the different working areas described above will evolve in order to take account of this accumulation of experience and knowledge.

• To promote a renewed dialogue between the research community and the practitioner community . The EU will have to prepare a strategy for Rio plus 10. That network will provide opportunities to discuss new ideas as the problem of institutional architecture is one of a key issues of this summit. The operation of this network during this process could help to perceive better public opinion evolution on trade issues and the rationale behind it.

• Tol supply new ideas on democratic processes and to organise the public debate on trade issues. Environment and social issues, as well as health and food security, will be key issues of the renewed discussion in WTO. This network can mobilise European expertise around informal meetings parallel to the formal process. The idea is to raise the level of European expertise on these issues to be able to introduce new ideas in the global debate where US academics still have a very prominent role. This network could in that view be mobilised in the framework of the transatlantic dialogue.

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