The Impact of EU Human Rights Commitments on Its Trade Negotiations Case Study: Serbia

The aim of this paper is to analyse the impact of the EU commitment to Human Rights on its trade negotiations with Serbia. The data collected was from completed trade agreements, human rights reports, progress reports and enlargement strategies, as well as a wide range of press conferences and statements made by various European institutions. The positioning by the EU of human rights commitments within their trade negotiations are analysed through four variables (rationale, definition, priority and conditionality) over a ten year period from 2003-2013 by using a process tracing method. These trade negotiations demonstrate that the EU has been playing a highly normative role in such negotiations with Serbia using actively the principle of conditionality.