EC 통상정책의 결정체제 및 특성

Abstract

Since the enaclment of the Single European Act in 1987 the EC has stepped up its

unifying efforts toward even establishing a political union. Such a move not only represents

the EC's aggressive response to the rapidly changing internatinal political economy, but

forebears a fundamental change in it. This article aims at analyzing the current state of

the internal market and the process of integrating and harmonizing commercial policies

among the EC countries with disparate political and economic interests. In particular, this

paper will examine the current structure and the general patterns of decision-making in

the EC, and then stress the characteristics of the EC's commercial policy which has to be

made in such process and the complicated decision-making structure.

The EC's commercial policy is in esssence the product of political wheeling and dealing

both among the 12 member countries and between the EC and the numerous third countries.

As a result, the EC's trade policy tends to be protectionistic and it will be increasingly

so in the future. Of course, its strength will depend on the successful completion of the

Uruguay Round trade negotiations. Nonetheless, the EC's commercial policy tends to take

on the feature of industrial policy, as member countries strive to maintain their traditional

competitive position not only vis-a-vis the world but within the enlarged EC market.

In view of the above, to conduct a proper analysis and to reach a more accurate

understanding of the shaping of the EC's commercial policy in the future, it is necessary

to focus not only on the EC's commercial policy itself, but more extensively on the process,

speed, direction and the contents of single market formation, and on the EC's competition

policy, industrial policy, technology development policy and even various sorts of social

regulatory policies (including environmental protection and consumer protection).