The European Union (EU) faces a pressing, multi-level energy crisis propelled by the perfect storm of Russia's war in Ukraine and rapidly progressing climate change. As a result, the EU is scrambling ...to ensure it has sufficient energy supplies for the foreseeable future while reinventing its energy strategy in the long term. Since the EU is at a critical juncture for squaring EU energy security with European and international legal commitments, this article surveys this radical shift and its consequences. It analyses new EU-wide crisis-response tools and ad hoc bilateral arrangements with third countries against existing legal commitments. Recent developments are only the beginning of a much larger re-evaluation of core notions of the 'trade-energy security' nexus. To decarbonize, the EU must move towards a 'security-centred' energy transition, premised on 'security first, compliance second'. This requires reassessing the notion of 'protectionism' in geopolitically sensitive areas and the current division of energy competences between the EU and its Member States.
This book was originally published in 2007. Developing countries make up the majority of the membership of the World Trade Organization. Many developing countries believe that the welfare gains that ...were supposed to ensue from the establishment of the WTO and the results of the Uruguay Round remain largely unachieved. Coming on the heels of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the ongoing Doha Development Round, launched in that Middle Eastern city in the fall of 2001, is now on 'life support'. It was inaugurated with much fanfare as a means of addressing the difficulties faced by developing countries within the multilateral trading system. Special and differential treatment provisions in the WTO agreement in particular are the focus of much discussion in the ongoing round, and voices for change are multiplying because of widespread dissatisfaction with the effectiveness, enforceability, and implementation of those special treatment provisions.
The period from 2019 to 2020 is critical in determining whether the World Trade Organization (WTO), tasked with eliminating capacity-enhancing fisheries subsidies, can deliver to the world an ...agreement that will discipline subsidies that lead to overfishing. Here, following extensive data collection efforts, we present an update of the current scope, amount and analysis of the level of subsidisation of the fisheries sector worldwide. We estimate global fisheries subsidies at USD 35.4 billion in 2018, of which capacity-enhancing subsidies are USD 22.2 billion. The top five subsidising political entities (China, European Union, USA, Republic of Korea and Japan) contribute 58% (USD 20.5 billion) of the total estimated subsidy. The updated global figure has decreased since the most recent previous estimate from 2009, of USD 41.4 billion in 2018 constant dollars. The difference between these two estimates can be largely explained by improvements in methodology and the difference in the actual amount of subsidies provided. Thus, we consider direct statistical comparison of these numbers to be inappropriate. Having said that, the difference between the estimates suggest that the increase in fisheries subsidies provided in the preceding decades may have halted. Still, the bulk of harmful ‘capacity-enhancing’ subsidies, particularly those for fossil fuels have actually increased as a proportion of total subsidies. As such, for the benefit of marine ecosystems, and current and future generations of people, all hands must be on deck in helping the WTO reach a meaningful agreement to discipline subsidies that lead to overcapacity and overfishing.
With the deepening vertical specialization of production networks and value chains among countries, the problem of global embodied carbon emission leakage under multilateral trade agreement ...cooperation is becoming increasingly prominent. This study measures the index of “World Trade Organization+" and “World Trade Organization-X,” finds the complex impact of the two types of deep integration of trade agreements on embodied carbon emissions from the network perspective, and compares them to draw conclusions and suggestions. First, the global trade-embodied carbon transfer link spontaneously diversifies, with most countries moving from the network's perimeter to its center. Second, more trade agreements can help carbon-absorbing, and carbon-spillover countries narrow the “production side” and “consumption side” divide. Third, “World Trade Organization+" and “World Trade Organization-X" deep integration influence embodied carbon emission linkages differently for countries with different embodied carbon emission attributes, with “World Trade Organization-X" having a more significant impact. At the policy level, free trade agreements have deepened to a certain extent to provide a consistent and synergistic path for trade governance and climate globalization. Countries should actively introduce relevant provisions based on the governance of trade-embodied carbon emission reductions in “World Trade Organization+" and “World Trade Organization-X", especially in “World Trade Organization-X", and some of the relevant policy provisions can be appropriately weighted in favor of developing countries.
Over the past decades, the China-Russian energy partnership has become firmly established. Significant milestones such as the 2009 oil and the 2014 gas deals demonstrate the geopolitical impact of ...this partnership. The article finds that the China-Russian energy cooperation uses a partnership-based relational approach that eschews rulemaking by treaty. Instead, the legal framework of this partnership is multi-layered and has distinct features. It relies heavily on bilateralism, pragmatic cooperation, and non-binding commitments. A range of instruments applies at the bilateral level, including a bilateral investment treaty, energy cooperation agreements, intergovernmental agreements on significant energy deals, and many joint communiques and statements of a soft law nature. Regarding regional energy governance, China and Russia prefer different approaches, as reflected in their participation in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Eurasian Economic Union, and the Belt and Road Initiative. While these regional mechanisms contribute to the energy partnership, their impact on the legal framework is limited.
Abstract
Individuals, businesses, and governments increasingly use data to create new services delivered via the internet. In so doing, they are creating a new economy built on cross-border data ...flows. The USA, the European Union, and China are using domestic and foreign policies to reap data-based economies of scale and scope. Essentially, they have created three distinct data realms with different approaches to data governance. As a result, they have fostered a new digital divide: between the three data behemoths and other countries that are rule takers. This situation presents the WTO with a challenge and an opportunity. These three data realms could undermine the ability of the WTO to govern trade in data flows, but it also creates pressures for the three data realms to use WTO mechanisms to find common ground among their approaches. Moreover, it could provide an incentive to WTO members to create new rules governing trade in data.
WTO rulings and the veil of anonymity Pauwelyn, Joost; Pelc, Krzysztof
European journal of international law,
09/2022, Volume:
33, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Despite a general push for greater transparency, opacity continues to play an important function in international tribunals. The World Trade Organization (WTO) is a case in point. While it has done ...much to increase its openness, the very design of its dispute settlement body is premised on anonymity in some essential respects. We examine two such instances, each dealing with the authorship of dispute rulings. First, we use text analysis tools to demonstrate that the WTO's panel reports appear to be largely drafted by WTO Secretariat staff rather than the panellists themselves. This appears especially true for the WTO's most systemically important disputes. Second, we show that the formal anonymity of dissenting opinions, which is required by the WTO's rules, is a thin veil. Using the most recent Appellate Body's dissent for demonstration, we use text analysis to pinpoint its likely author. In both these instances, we argue that anonymity exists by design: it serves to strike a balance between judicial autonomy and political control. Yet, in both settings, due to increased scrutiny and widespread access to text analysis tools, the equilibrium relying on anonymity is likely to be upset, with implications for the institution's future design. We argue that the ultimate result may be a beneficial one and offer a menu of reform options.
At the twentieth anniversary of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the WTO’s dispute settlement system is celebrated as one of the organization’s biggest achievements. Although powerful members such ...as China, the European Union (EU), and the United States are regularly on the losing side of WTO trade disputes, overall support for the system remains high. If anything, it has increased over time, with early criticism by civil society waning. Compare this situation to investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), centered around the World Bank’s International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). ISDS, which started in earnest around the same time that the WTO was created, is under fire not only in capital-importing countries ranging from Ecuador, Indonesia, and South Africa but also in capital-exporting nations such as Australia, Germany, and the United States. Indeed, in the ongoing EU-U.S. negotiations over a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), ISDS emerged as one of the biggest bones of contention.
As a new form of regional multilateralism, the Belt and Road Initiative is China's most significant strategic move for external engagement in international economic law, following its World Trade ...Organization accession. This paper analyses China's approach towards the Belt and Road Initiative from a legal perspective, focusing on three questions: first, what is the proper scope of the Belt and Road Initiative? Second, is there an identifiable approach that China adopts in the Belt and Road Initiative context, and, if so, what is its key legal characteristic? Third, is China's Belt and Road Initiative approach sustainable? Employing a functional approach in defining the Belt and Road Initiative, the article identifies three qualities to China's approach to the Belt and Road Initiative: (i) that it is a hub-and-spoke network, (ii) it adopts a three-track institutional and mechanism approach, and (iii) a dual-track normative approach. Compared with the US trade approach (particularly the US- Mexico-Canada Agreement), these qualities reveal the key characteristic underpinning China's Belt and Road Initiative approach: maximised flexibility regarding institutions and norms to address uncertainties and challenges in the Belt and Road Initiative. Such flexibility will likely assist in ensuring that China's Belt and Road Initiative approach is sustainable by enabling trial-and-error, if properly managed. However, it also gives rise to concerns around China's Belt and Road Initiative approach, especially as to its predictability, coherence, and transparency.
As tariffs have fallen dramatically over the past decades, behind-the-border measures—such as technical barriers to trade (TBT) and sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures—have become increasingly ...important for international trade policy. To facilitate trade, governments sign trade agreements in which they agree to base such measures on international standards. But who actually develops these standards? This book takes a close look at the International Organization for Standardization and the Codex Alimentarius – two prominent standard-setting organizations in the area of TBT and SPS – to investigate how international standardization influences the design of international trade agreements, and vice versa.
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