根據歐盟執委會資料，歐盟迄今（2011年11月止）與其主要貿易 伙伴共簽署28個自由貿易協定（free trade agreement, FTA)。然而，過去針對歐盟所簽署FTA之內容分析大都屬個案硏究或少數案例之比較 硏究。缺乏有系統地整理與分析所有歐盟FTA所涵蓋的政策項目和性質 差異。於是我們的知識仍停留在特定歐盟FTA的內容爲何、爭議何在， 及其政策衝擊大小等問題上。無法進一步將已知的FTA個案資料予以通 則化。
本文旨在彌補上述知識空白’採用Horn, Mavroidis及Sapir所發展 出的52項政策議題分類，再將其整合成WTO-plus (14項）及WTO-extra(38項）政策類別。據此來分析目前所有歐盟自由貿易協定的文本內容 (共28份）。找出每一歐盟FTA涵蓋政策項目多寡，並試圖解釋歐盟 FTA之政策涵蓋率高低的背後原因爲何。本文發現歐盟所簽署的大多數 FTA較偏向WTO plus政策類型。而與其WTO plus政策涵蓋率相關的解 釋變數包括簽署年份順序、2006年傀儡變項、對手國的人口總數及經濟 規模、對手國過去已簽署的FTA數目、簽約時歐盟會員國數目，以及對 手國是否國界緊鄰歐盟會員國等。

According to the Commission of the European Union (EU), there have been to date (November 2011) twenty-eight Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) signed between the EU and its trade partners. However, most existing studies of existing EU FTAs are either single-case studies or limited-case comparative studies. As a result, our knowledge is confined to which policy provisions each of the EU FTAs included or omitted, what legal and political controversies were attached to each of the FTAs, and the economic impact each FTA had on its signatories. There have been few attempts to generalize the existing knowledge derived from case studies on these FTAs. This paper aims to fill this gap in the literature by systematically categorizing and analyzing the content of EU FTAs. Using Horn, Marvroidis, and Sapir’s classification framework, which categorizes fifty-two policies into either WTO plus (fourteen items) or WTO extra (thirty-eight items) policy areas, the paper seeks to identify the policy areas included in each of the twenty-eight EU FTAs, at the same time as developing hypotheses to explain policy coverage rates for EU FTAs. The paper finds that most EU FTAs can be classified as WTO-plus type, in the sense that they include higher proportions of WTO-plus policy items. In addition, the following explanatory variables are found to be correlated with the appearance of a WTO-plus policy focus: the chronological order in which FTAs are signed, the 2006 dummy item, the population and economic size of the trade partner, the number of FTAs previously signed by the trade partner, the number of EU members when the FTA is signed, and whether the trade partner is geographically adjacent to EU member states.