The emergence of a commercial heavy-weight: the Kennedy Round negotiations and the European Community of the 1960s

The Kennedy Round of GATT negotiations between 1963 and 1967 saw the debut on the international commercial stage of the EEC negotiating as a single entity. The Round thus represents a valuable opportunity to assess the impact of the EEC on the international trading system, the compatibility of regional integration with global trade liberalization, and the effectiveness of the Community system in allowing 'Europe' to speak internationally with one voice. Its judgement is largely positive, noting in particular the strong connection between the EEC’s emergence and both the original American decision to launch the Round and the main negotiating method employed—that of across-the-board tariff cuts. The Kennedy Round, in other words, constituted both a direct response to the Community’s growing economic stature and an imitation at global level of the approach to tariff reduction that it had pioneered. The episode also provides a chance to examine the interplay between the EEC’s two largest states, France and West Germany, and to suggest that the contrast between their respective approaches to the Kennedy Round was less profound than is normally suggested