Academic profile
Caroline is a Carlsberg postdoctoral fellow at the University of Cambridge, Department of Land Economy. Her research focuses on the EU’s trade and sustainability policies from the perspective of the Global South. In addition, she works on the overlap between international environmental and economic governance, mainly the interaction between the Paris Agreement and trade policy. More broadly, she is interested in international institutions, regime interaction, policy transference, and international political economy. Caroline holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Copenhagen and have previously been a visiting scholar at Ghent University, as well as taken part in Oxford University’s Europaeum Scholars Programme for doctoral candidates. Prior to her academic career, Caroline held positions at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, the Danish Parliament and the Ministry of Taxation in Denmark, working on EU affairs, trade policy and international climate policy.
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Research interests
During her PhD, Caroline examined the sustainable development provisions within the EU’s preferential trade agreements, while her postdoctoral research investigates the EU’s autonomous trade-sustainability instruments. In this work, she explores the import bans on products linked to deforestation and forced labor, as well as the EU’s carbon border adjustment mechanism. These policies have generated significant political resistance, especially from trade partners in the Global South. While not being notably impacted economically, many of these still strongly oppose these measures. Her research delves into the political and strategic reasons behind the resistance, highlighting how the opposition arises from deeper political concerns. Furthermore, she also examine the broader implications of the EU’s autonomous policies for other trade subsystems, namely multilateral (WTO) and bilateral (FTAs) trade and sustainability negotiations, where the EU's unilateral actions are often contested. Drawing on meeting reports, policy documents, elite interviews, and media analysis, her work emphasises the need for a more progressive EU trade policy that addresses both the political concerns and the cross-system impact driving external opposition.
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Publications
Bertram, Caroline (2023) ‘EU Trade Agreements and Sustainable Development’, Campus Print – University of Copenhagen, ISBN978-87-94494-85-4. [PhD dissertation]
Bertram, Caroline (2022) ‘The Trade-Sustainability Nexus: the Evolution of the European Commission’s Trade and Sustainable Development Discourse from 1993 to 2022’, Journal of European Public Policy, 30:10, 2097-2122, DOI: 10.1080/13501763.2023.2238207.
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Category/Classification
EU, trade policy, sustainable development, climate governance |