EU Trade Law


Book Description

This comprehensive book provides a thorough analytical overview of the European Union’s existing law and policy in the field of international trade. Considering the history and context of the law’s evolution, it offers an adept examination of its common commercial policy competence through the years, starting with the Treaty of Rome up until the Treaty of Lisbon, as a background for understanding the EU’s present role in the World Trade Organization (WTO) framework.




The EU and the Rule of Law in International Economic Relations


Book Description

This timely book explores the complexities of the EU’s international economic relations in the context of its commitment to the rule of law both within the Union and internationally. Bringing together diverse perspectives from both EU and international law scholars and practitioners, the book investigates some of the most controversial and lively issues in the field of EU external relations and the relationship between EU law and international law.




EU External Action in International Economic Law


Book Description

The topic of this book is the external action of the EU within international economic law, with a special focus on investment law. The aim of the volume is to provide the reader with an appraisal of the most recent trends and developments that have characterised a field that has been rapidly evolving and in which the EU has imposed itself as a leading actor. The book is aimed at academics, practitioners and graduate students as well as at EU officials and judges, all of whom should find the subject matter discussed useful for keeping updated on a scholarly discussion of relevance to case law. Mads Andenas is Professor of Law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Oslo in Norway. Luca Pantaleo is Doctor of Law and Senior Lecturer in International and European Law at The Hague University of Applied Sciences in The Netherlands. Matthew Happold is Professor of Law at the Université du Luxembourg in Luxembourg. Cristina Contartese is Lecturer in Law at the European Law and Governance School in Athens, Greece.




Handbook on the EU and International Trade


Book Description

The Handbook on the EU and International Trade presents a multidisciplinary overview of the major perspectives, actors and issues in contemporary EU trade relations. Changes in institutional dynamics, Brexit, the politicisation of trade, competing foreign policy agendas, and adaptation to trade patterns of value chains and the digital and knowledge economy are reshaping the European Union's trade policy. The authors tackle how these challenges frame the aims, processes and effectiveness of trade policy making in the context of the EU's trade relations with developed, developing and emerging states in the global economy.




International Economic Law and the Challenges of the Free Zones


Book Description

Special economic zones (SEZs) have become a permanent feature of the world trade scene. This book, the first to provide a critical and comprehensive analysis of SEZs covering a wide spectrum of countries and regions, shows how SEZs, albeit established at the domestic level by different countries, raise multiple legal issues under international economic law. This first-rate book is the product of the Asia FDI Forum IV held in Hong Kong in 2018. Thoroughly exploring the development of the SEZ phenomenon and its players, the contributing authors (all leading economic law experts) review the issues raised by SEZs in the context of international trade law, international investment law and investment arbitration. They identify the extent to which SEZs have been coherent in their design and policymaking, in particular with regard to domestic law reforms. They address such aspects (both core themes and specific examples) as the following: investment protection in China’s SEZs; state-owned enterprises regulation; dispute settlement; under what circumstances incentives available in SEZs count as export subsidies prohibited under World Trade Organization (WTO) rules; compliance with internal market rules in European Union (EU) free zones; local populations as victims of land expropriation; Brazil’s Manaus Free Trade Zone; India’s experience with multiple SEZs; the administrative approval system in the Shanghai Free Trade Zone; economic corridors and transit routes as SEZs; ‘refugee cities’: SEZs for migrants; how China’s Supreme People’s Court serves national strategy; how foreign investors challenge free-zone regimes; impacts of the establishment of SEZs on tax revenues; SEZs and labour migration; and management models. The chapters also include insights into the new emerging generation of international investment agreements; WTO accession, transparency, and case law materials clarifying specific trade issues associated with SEZs; and new rules to protect the environment and labour rights, as well as analysis of crucially significant cases such as Goetz v. The Republic of Burundi, Lee Jong Baek v. Kyrgyzstan and Ampal-American and Others v. Egypt. With its critical and comprehensive analysis of the dynamic SEZ phenomenon across legal, economic, investment, regulatory and policy matrices – including a thorough analysis of the success factors and required policies for SEZs – this book takes a giant step towards answering the question whether SEZs fundamentally contradict norms of international law or whether SEZs have to be considered as laboratories which facilitate the implementation of international economic policies. Its careful examination of theory and practice and its approach to lessons learned from case studies will reward trade and investment officials, policymakers, diplomats, economists, lawyers, think tanks, business leaders and others interested in this ever more important area of law and economics.




Global Politics and EU Trade Policy


Book Description

This book explores how the European Union designs its trade policy to face the most recent challenges and to influence global policy issues. It provides with an interdisciplinary perspective, by combining legal, political, and economic approaches. It studies a broad set of trade instruments that are used by the EU in its trade policy, such as: trade agreements, multilateral initiatives, unilateral trade policies, as well as, internal market tools. Therefore, the contributions to this volume present the EU’s Trade Policy through different lenses providing a complex view of it.




Extraterritoriality of EU Economic Law


Book Description

This book sheds new light on the potential application of EU law to situations arising outside EU territory, and its consequences. In today’s globalized world, EU law and the ECJ’s decisions have been calling for exceptions and defining new connecting elements that make the traditional approach of EU law, based on the territoriality principle, less straightforward. This is the case with e.g. the effects doctrine in the context of EU competition law, as was fully recognized after the ECJ’s Intel case. Moreover, recently approved rules concerning the EU’s internal market, EU environmental law and EU data protection law have made it more difficult to define the application of EU law in terms of a pure link to the territoriality principle. The book examines these and other problems from the perspectives of various branches of EU economic law. With regard to EU competition law it presents, among others, studies on the evolution of the effects doctrine in the US and the EU; extraterritoriality of competition law; global cartels; merger control; state aid and cooperation between NCAs. Furthermore, it includes several studies concerning extraterritorial issues in trade relations between the EU and China; EU screening regulation of foreign direct investments; EU trade agreements; EU investment law and EU financial services. The twenty-one contributing authors are internationally respected experts on EU law.




The EU, World Trade Law and the Right to Food


Book Description

In recent years the European Union has developed a comprehensive strategy to conclude free trade agreements which includes not only prominent trade partners such as Canada, the United States and Japan but also numerous developing countries. This book looks at the existing WTO law and at the new EU free trade agreements with the Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa through the lens of the human right to adequate food. It shows how the clauses on the import and export of food included in recent free trade agreements limit the capacity of these countries to implement food security policies and to respect their human rights obligations. This outcome appears to be at odds with international human rights law and dismissive of existing human rights references in EU-founding treaties as well as in treaties between the EU and developing states. Yet, the book argues against the conception in human rights literature that there is an inflexible agenda encoded in world trade law which is fundamentally conflictual with non-economic interests. The book puts forward the idea that the European Union is perfectly placed to develop a narrative of globalisation considering other areas of public international law when negotiating trade agreements and argues that the EU does have the competences and influence to uphold a role of international leadership in designing a sustainable global trading system. Will the EU be ambitious enough? A timely contribution to the growing academic literature on the relation between world trade law and international human rights law, this book imagines a central role for the EU in reconciling these two areas of international law.




European Yearbook of International Economic Law 2017


Book Description

Volume 8 of the EYIEL focuses on the external economic relations of the European Union as one of the most dynamic political fields in the process of European integration. The first part of this volume analyses the recent controversial questions of the external economic relations of the Union, dealing with the complexity of mixed agreements, transparency and legitimacy issues as well as recent proposals in relation to Investor-State-Dispute Settlement, the Trade Defence Instruments and the implications of the “Brexit” in this context. The second part of EYIEL 8 addresses ongoing bilateral and multilateral negotiations of the EU with China, Japan, Australia, Canada and Taiwan. Moreover, the third part deals with the EU in international organisations and institutions, in particular the recent institutional aspects of the EU-UN relationship, representation in the IMF as well as WTO jurisprudence involving the EU in 2015. The volume concludes with reviews of recent books in international economic law.




The Brussels Effect


Book Description

For many observers, the European Union is mired in a deep crisis. Between sluggish growth; political turmoil following a decade of austerity politics; Brexit; and the rise of Asian influence, the EU is seen as a declining power on the world stage. Columbia Law professor Anu Bradford argues the opposite in her important new book The Brussels Effect: the EU remains an influential superpower that shapes the world in its image. By promulgating regulations that shape the international business environment, elevating standards worldwide, and leading to a notable Europeanization of many important aspects of global commerce, the EU has managed to shape policy in areas such as data privacy, consumer health and safety, environmental protection, antitrust, and online hate speech. And in contrast to how superpowers wield their global influence, the Brussels Effect - a phrase first coined by Bradford in 2012- absolves the EU from playing a direct role in imposing standards, as market forces alone are often sufficient as multinational companies voluntarily extend the EU rule to govern their global operations. The Brussels Effect shows how the EU has acquired such power, why multinational companies use EU standards as global standards, and why the EU's role as the world's regulator is likely to outlive its gradual economic decline, extending the EU's influence long into the future.