This paper seeks to contribute to the debate about the role of norms in EU foreign policy by looking at EU policies in the International Labour Organization (ILO) in the making of a Consolidated Maritime Labour Convention (ILOMLC). Given the economic importance of shipping for many EU members,...

Integration may occur through coercion and intergovernmental bargaining - through blackmail, tradition, functional adaptation, copying, diffusion or exit - but it may also occur through reflexive reason-giving and entrenched commitments. The usefulness of such an approach to transnational and...