VAN DAMME Isabelle - New Directions in EU Trade Law & Policy (25h)
This seminar will focus on the design and practice of EU Trade Law and Policy.
The seminar will start with an overview of the history of EU Trade Law and Policy and the core principles of international trade law, focusing on, inter alia, the dynamic development of the scope of the common commercial policy, the role of the CJEU and the relationship of co-adaptation between the European Union and the GATT 1947/WTO. The overview of that history will end with an introduction to the European Union’s current policy of ‘strategic autonomy’. For the purpose of this seminar, EU Trade Law and Policy will be understood as also covering investment law and policy.
Against that historical background, the seminar will address the institutional aspects of EU Trade Law and Policy. Those aspects include, but are not limited to, the vertical and horizontal allocation of competences, the practice of and principles governing the negotiation and conclusion of EU-only and mixed trade and investment agreements and their possible provisional application.
After having covered the institutional aspects, the next part of the seminar will focus on substantive aspects of EU trade and investment law and its enforcement.
In covering the substantive aspects of EU trade law, the seminar will start with the function and operation of EU trade defence instruments (safeguards, dumping, and (foreign and transnational) subsidies). Next, the seminar will consider the design and structure of EU preferential trade agreements (PTAs) and examine how those agreements compare with the WTO covered agreements. Particular attention will be given to rules of origin in EU PTAs and the sustainability chapters in those agreements. This part of the seminar will also cover sanctions and export control (from a trade perspective), elements of the interaction between the CFSP and the CCP, as well as substantive aspects of EU legislation addressing supply chains (such as the deforestation regulation, and corporate due diligence and forced labour legislation). In addressing aspects of substantive EU investment law, the focus will be on FDI control and the main features of EU investment agreements.
The discussion about enforcement will distinguish between unilateral tools for enforcement and resort to various forms of third-party adjudication. The unilateral tools encompass, apart from trade remedies, more recent initiatives such as, for example, the Enforcement Regulation, the creation of the Chief Trade Enforcement Officer and the Anti-coercion Regulation. Overall, we will consider how the European Union may respond to certain measures of third parties, including the US tariffs. The availability of third-party adjudication includes “internal” remedies before the CJEU as well as “external” remedies before notably the WTO dispute settlement bodies, various types of disputes settlement under EU PTAs and dispute settlement under investment agreements. ISDS reform will also be addressed.