The conduct of European trade policy, long seen as the responsibility of technocrats and experts, has become an issue of public debate that rallies civil society and arouses strong emotions. Both its purpose and its effectiveness are disputed, and with those the legitimacy of how this policy is devised, negotiated and ratified. Both Pascal Lamy and Mogens Peter Carl have several decades of experience in conducting trade policy at both the EU and multilateral level. They even worked together when the former was EU Trade Commissioner (2000-2004) and the latter was Director-General of the Commission’s Directorate General for Trade (2000-2005). They compare and often constrast their analyses, opinions and convictions during this interview carried out in light of what has happened since.
This interview was carried out by Elvire Fabry, senior research fellow at the Jacques Delors Institute.