Browsing by Author "Rajala, Risto"

Treaty of Lisbon changed the institutional structure of the European Union significantly and empowered the European Parliament in many different policy domains, including trade policy. At the same time, the trade negotiations that the EU engaged in started to receive a lot of public attention and criticism. This study focuses on the adoption of CETA (Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement) between the EU and Canada in the European Parliament and analyses the emphases of the involved actors in the theoretical framework of policy frames. The first research question of the study asks what policy frame were mobilized in the process. The second question focuses on the actors who mobilized the policy frames. The third question observes the emphases of the actors between the mobilized policy frames. The methodological framework of the study is theory-based qualitative content analysis, because its reliance on a specific theoretical framework. The data consists of press release, motions for resolutions and other documents that were published by the actors involved in the process. The coding frame that was used in the organization of the data is based on the key characteristics of policy frames that are issue definitions, justifications and solutions. Six policy frames were identified from the process. The advocates of CETA mobilized three policy frames that were based on its political value, economic gains and on the claim that it is a progressive and balanced outcome. The opponents of CETA also mobilized three policy frames, arguing that it was bad practice, that it was imbalanced outcome, and that it had fundamental problems. The political actors involved in the process mostly backed all three policy frames that shared their stance on the agreement. However, they often paid particular attention to one specific policy frame, while almost completely ignoring the opinions of their opponents. The analysis proves the power of policy frames and indicates that they had a crucial role in the adoption of CETA by enabling its advocates to create a sufficient political coalition behind the agreement. It is clear that politicization will continue occur to in the trade policy of the EU, as well as policy framing. This is likely to expand the public debate on trade policy and to increase its transparency, thus making it more similar with other policy domains in the EU, from which it has so long differed.