The European Union as a global investment partner: law, policy and rhetoric in the attainment of development assistance and market liberalization?

The European Union's interest and involvement in foreign direct investment (FDI) is by no means new. However, it has only been comparatively recently that one has been able to begin to distinguih the particularities of a specific EU approach to FDI, especially when placed within a broader developmental context. The approach has been most visible during the ongoing negotiations of Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) with the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) grouping of States. Though the EU-ACP relationship is often promtoed (by the EU) as a model of mutual and benign co-operation between economically divergent States, the relationship highlights, in fact, political and normative challenges for both sides. This chapter, in particular, considers the recent 2008 EPA between the EU and the Caribbean, and wonders whether the rhetoric of the linkages between development and FDI liberalization is matched by the reality