Home Field Advantage? EU–ACP Economic Partnership Agreement Meeting Locations and Textual Tone

• Published date: 01 July 2022
• Author: Samuel Brazys,Martijn Schoonvelde
• Date: 01 July 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.13290

Home Field Advantage? EU–ACP Economic Partnership

Agreement Meeting Locations and Textual Tone

SAMUEL BRAZYSand MARTIJN SCHOONVELDE

School of Politics and International Relations at University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

Abstract

The European Union’s Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) with countries in the African,

Caribbean and Pacif‌ic (ACP) group are touted as a new form of equitable engagement. However,

many argue that the EPAs simply substitute a different form of political and economic domination.

In this paper, we consider if the siting of meetings has a substantive impact on EPA outcomes or

media reporting thereof. Using a difference-in-difference like approach we evaluate if the tone and

polarity of media reports about the EPAs during periods of ‘home’meetings in the ACP countries

differs from media reports during ‘away’meetings in the EU. Using two different datasets we ar-

rive at differing results, leading to inconclusive overall f‌indings. While we suspect that the alter-

nating meeting site norm has implications for EPA process and outcomes, further research will

be needed to uncover the precise nature of these effects.

Keywords: ACP; trade; justice; economic partnership agreements; Cotonou agreement

Introduction

With the decline and dormancy of the multilateral trade regime, regional or preferential

free trade agreements (FTAs) are becoming increasingly important in def‌ining the rules

and outcomes of global trade. Yet, like their multilateral counterparts, these efforts are in-

fused with politics and concerns persist if these agreements yield mutual economic and/or

political benef‌its to all parties involved. In particular, so-called ‘north–south’trade agree-

ments raise the prospect of skewed international relations (Manger and Shadlen, 2014).

One of the most important ‘north–south’trade efforts is the Economic Partnership

Agreement (EPA) initiative between the European Union (EU) and 78 members of the

African, Caribbean and Pacif‌ic (ACP) group of states, intended to replace the Lomé Con-

vention, which was found to be in violation of World Trade Organization (WTO) rules on

reciprocity (Flint, 2009). Progress on the seven regional EPAs, however, has been uneven,

as only one EPA, CARIFORUM-EU, was completed by the initial target of 2008.

1

This

largely disappointing result has been attributed to a number of factors, including changes

in the international security and migration contexts, theincreased politicization of foreign

assistance, and ACP scepticism and resistance to the agreements (Carbone, 2019).

Rather than examining economic outcomes or implications, in this paper we focus on

if the process of the EPA negotiation and implementation meetings contributes to global

justice via an upholding of the republican principle of non-domination (Pettit, 2012).

Drawing on business negotiation, social psychology and international negotiation litera-

tures, we develop an argument that EPA negotiations should be subject to a ‘home f‌ield

1

https://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2009/september/tradoc_144912.pdf. Accessed 02-03-2020.

JCMS 2022 Volume 60. Number 4. pp. 903–925DOI: 10.1111/jcms.13290

© 2021 University Association for Contemporary European Studies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd

advantage’based on psychological, external physical and environmental factors or inter-

nal procedural pressures. This advantage may enable ACP negotiating states and ACP

non-governmental actors to be especially effective in setting the tone, if not asserting their

interests, when meetings are taking place in their countries, perhaps offsetting some of the

EU’s material advantage and better enabling the ACP states to advance a

counter-hegemonic discourse. The notion that ‘home f‌ield advantage’may matter has

been largely overlooked in considering process or outcomes in international relations, de-

spite the overwhelming evidence of its importance in other arenas (especially sport).

We evaluate this contention by combining latent semantic scoring on media records

about EPA meetings with a novel compiled dataset of EPA meeting dates and locations.

Employing a difference-in-difference like method, we evaluate if the tone and/or polarity

of media records differs based on reporting during periods of ‘home’(ACP) or ‘away’

(EU) EPA meetings. Despite a rich and novel dataset of meeting locations, our f‌indings

are inconclusive. When using media records from the Factiva database, we f‌ind a more

positive average tone in media reports surrounding ‘home’meetings, driven by less usage

of negative language in media reports during those meetings, in contrast to our expecta-

tions. However, when using the temporally truncated, but more widespread, GDELT da-

tabase of media reports, we f‌ind an increase in negative language usage in media reports

during ‘home’meetings. Despite accounting for source and time we are unable to recon-

cile these differing results, leaving the question open as to if and how meeting location

might inf‌luence media reporting or outcomes of the EPA negotiations.

In the subsequent sections, we f‌irst give a brief background on the EPA negotiations

and issues of asymmetry, justice, and non-domination therein. We then develop an argu-

ment for why the location of trade agreement meetings will impact the tone and content of

language describing outcomes from those meetings, if not the outcomes themselves, be-

fore describing our data and methods and evaluating our expectations. We conclude with

broader thoughts on the importance of negotiation siting for the delivery of global justice

in international affairs.

I.The Economic Partnership Agreements Negotiations

The EU–ACP EPAs were initiated via the Cotonou Agreement as a means of replacing

the non-reciprocal trade arrangements under the Lomé Conventions with trade agree-

ments that would be compliant with WTO principles of reciprocity and

non-discrimination (Borrmann et al., 2005). The EU sought accords with at f‌irst six,

and then seven, distinct regional groupings of ACP countries: Central

Africa, Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA), the East African Community (EAC), the

Southern African Development Community (SADC), the Economic Community of West-

ern African States and the West African Economic and Monetary Union (ECOWAS), the

Caribbean Forum (CARIFORUM), and the 15 Pacif‌ic Island Countries (PICs). The ambi-

tion was to conclude negotiations with the agreements entering into force by 1 January

2008 (Borrmann et al., 2005). However, as shown in Table 1, the only EPA which was

completed by this date was CARIFORUM. The remaining six regions all experienced

some degree of variation in either timing or membership of the EPA (Carbone, 2019).

While many of the countries who have not yet signed an EPA retain eligibility for prefer-

ential market access to the EU through the ‘Everything but Arms’(EBA) agreement,

Samuel Brazys and Martijn Schoonvelde904

© 2021 University Association for Contemporary European Studies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd