The WTO and Food Safety Regulatory Policy Innovation in the European Union

Abstract

This article, first, weighs the impact of exogenous developments associated with the supranational regulation of food safety in the World Trade Organization (WTO) relative to internal pressures associated with food safety crises and the breakdown of the internal market on food safety regulatory reforms underway in the European Union (EU); and second, probes the capacity and propensity of the Commission to act as a policy entrepreneur, leveraging the two arenas – the domestic and global – to expedite policy reforms. It finds evidence of Commission policy entrepreneurship at home and abroad, but cautions that the former is constrained by a mediative policy style dictated by the EU's institutional and legal framework and exacerbated by food safety crises.