Preparing For The Negotiation Of Preferential Trade Agreements With The Eu

With the globalisation of the world economy, the multiplication of international agreements and the ever expending scope and depth of issues addressed, trade negotiations are representing new challenges from which developing countries are not immune. Besides their own regional integration process and the current Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations, many developing countries have been negotiating preferential trade agreements with industrialised countries. Apart from their broad coverage and technical nature, these North-South trade negotiations pose a particular problem in reason of the strong asymmetry among the players. While the industrialised entities (countries or regions) involved have plenty of capacity and generally experience in negotiating such trade agreements, the developing countries concerned are generally handicapped by insufficient resources, lack of capacity and know-how, and virtually no experience in negotiating such agreements. The effective participation of developing countries to such negotiations on North-South preferential trade agreements, as well as any other international trade negotiation for that matter, would ultimately depend on the long term development of their capacity to identify trade and development objectives, to formulate policy positions and to establish negotiation strategies. The purpose of this paper is to identify some of the lessons that may be of interest to the ACP in their preparation for regional EPA negotiations with the EU. The main examples are taken from the Trade, Development and Cooperation Agreement between the EU and South Africa (TDCA), in force since 2000, the experience of the Caribbean in the current FTAA negotiations and their preparation for their negotiations with the EU, and MERCOSUR (comprising Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay) experience in negotiating the FTAA and a free trade agreement with the EU. A review of these negotiations suggests that the developing countries involved in negotiations with the EU have faced some similar challenges, which the ACP are currently facing in the context of EPA negotiations.

This e-book compiles the written contributions prepared by the speakers of an EUI conference titled 'Global Europe: The New Generation of EU Preferential Trade Agreements'. The conference took place on May 14-15, 2012, on the EUI premises in San Domenico di Fiesole. It was organized by the EUI Working Group on EU External Relations Law, under the auspices of Professor Marise Cremona and Professor Petros Mavroidis, with generous support provided by the EUI's Global Governance Programme and the Academy of European Law. The e-book is divided into four parts. In the introductory part, David Kleimann provides a perspective on the European Commission's efforts to implement the 'Global Europe' strategy and outlines the domestic and external challenges that EU leaders face in this process. Part II is devoted to crosscutting issues that generally apply to contemporary PTAs. Against the background of the most recent wave of regional and inter-regional economic integration, Petros Mavroidis argues that the relevance of the WTO for international trade liberalization and rule making is fading. Patrick Messerlin, secondly, considers the various domestic motives for the negotiation of PTAs and identifies the actors that play important roles in the political economy processes associated with the negotiation and conclusion of PTAs. Jean-Pierre Chauffour and David Kleimann, third, examine key economic, institutional, and policy challenges that arise in the course of PTA implementation processes in developing countries and derive a number of recommendations that aim at more effective and development oriented PTA implementation. Part III then turns to several of topics that shed light on specific aspects of EU PTA negotiations and their domestic ratification. For starters, Adrian van den Hoven contends that the EU is now moving toward a PTA negotiation approach that is more than ever geared towards the achievement of reciprocity of mutual commitments with partner countries. Maria Joao Podgorny, secondly, reflects on the role of the European Parliament in the area of EU trade and investment policy and provides a perspective on the process of inter-institutional cooperation between Parliament, the European Commission, and the Council with regard to the ratification of EU PTAs. Elisabeth Roderburg, third, argues the case for deep transatlantic economic integration between the EU and the United States. Jakob Cornides, fourth, explains how and why the European Commission seeks to export EU intellectual property protection standards to third countries through plurilateral and bilateral trade agreements. In Part IV of this e-book, four authors devote particular attention to the question of how the European Union seeks to achieve non-commercial objectives through the negotiation of PTAs. Isabelle Ramdoo and Sanoussi Bilal provide a critical reflection on the EU's approach to the negotiation of Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA) with African countries and assess the merits of this endeavour for the promotion of economic development and regional integration in Africa. Lorand Bartels, secondly, examines how the EU, by means of 'human rights clauses' and sustainable development chapters in its PTAs, implements its obligation to ensure that its external activities respect human rights and pursue the objective of promoting sustainable development. In a related contribution, Fabiano de Andrade Correa considers the extent to which EU trade agreements have increasingly included procedural and substantive sustainable development provisions in its PTAs.--Provided by publisher.

On 1 July 2000 regulations to liberalize trade flows between Mexico and the European Union came into force, after more than six years of diplomatic work and complex negotiations. These regulations are part of the "Tratado de Libre Comercio (TLCUEM), which is also one of the components of the Agreement on Economic Association, Political Concertation and Cooperation ("Global Agreement"). The Global Agreement through its three components - political dialogue, trade liberalization and cooperation- was at the time the most ambitious agreement ever constituted by the EU. The economic association component included in the Global Agreement - the TLCUEM- was the first overseas free trade treaty and served as an important precedent for later EU negotiations with other Latin American countries. The purpose of this essay is to analyze the reasons that led Mexico and the EU to the constitution of this treaty; to describe the main challenges of the Global Agreement negotiations of different components; and to briefly review the results of the first three years since the TLCUEM enforcement.

Draws on both theory and evaluations of several major Preferential trading arrangements (PTAs) to discuss the constraints to achieving liberalisation in PTAs and key problems facing negotiators trying to achieve the best outcomes within given political economy constraints, such as choice of rules of origin and dispute settlement procedures.

The Handbook offers an introduction to the key elements of Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs), addressing the practical economic and legal aspects of the regulatory policies in PTAs.

Preferential trade agreements (PTAs) have been proliferating for more than two decades, with the negotiations for a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and a Trans-Pacific Partnership being just the tip of the iceberg. This volume addresses some of the most pressing issues related to the surge of these agreements. It includes chapters written by leading political scientists, economists and lawyers which theoretically and empirically advance our understanding of trade agreements. The key theme is that PTAs vary widely in terms of design. The authors provide explanations as to why we see these differences in design and whether and how these differences matter in practice. The tools for understanding the purposes and effects of PTAs that are offered will guide future research and inform practitioners and trade policy experts about progress in the scientific enquiry into PTAs.

This timely book gives an overview of the main legal issues the EU faces in negotiating, concluding and implementing so-called ‘New Generation’ free trade agreements. Featuring contributions by international specialists on EU external action, this book demonstrates why these FTAs have become challenging for the EU, as well as analysing how the EU has dealt with its institutional constraints, and addresses contemporary debates and future challenges for EU institutions and Member States.

An in-depth analysis of the legal criteria that the WTO sets for preferential trade agreements in the area of services.

Abstract: "There has been an explosion in the number of preferential trade agreements in the past decade. Preferential trade agreements are characterized by liberalization with respect to only a few partners and thus they can potentially clash with and retard multilateral trade liberalization. Despite this important concern with preferential trade agreements, there is almost no systematic evidence on whether they actually affect multilateral trade liberalization. Karacaovali and Limô model the effect of preferential trade agreements on multilateral trade liberalization and show that preferential trade agreements slow down multilateral trade liberalization unless they have a common external tariff and allow for internal transfers. Next, they use detailed data on product-level tariffs negotiated by the European Union in the past two multilateral trade rounds to structurally estimate their model. The authors confirm the main prediction--the European Union's preferential trade agreements have clashed with its multilateral trade liberalization--and find that the effect is quantitatively significant. Moreover, they also confirm several auxiliary predictions of the model and provide new evidence on the political economy determinants of multilateral liberalization in the European Union. This paper--a product of the Trade Team, Development Research Group--is part of a larger effort in the group to understand the interaction between preferential and multilateral liberalization"--World Bank web site.