Increased complexity and density of transnational problems create unprecedented challenges and opportunities for contemporary international governance. “Issue linkage” is one institutional arrangem...

Beyond Trade The Expanding Scope of the Nontrade Agenda in Trade Agreements

An interdisciplinary work that comparatively studies rule of law practices and the relationship between the rule of law and regional integration, a topic largely explored in European integration. By looking at the function of the rule of law in ASEAN rather than what it 'means' measured on normative conception, the book situates the rule of law in broader institutional and political processes in the member states and in regional relations to show the motivations of member states in adopting a peculiar type of regional architecture. It asks whether forging the rule of law in the region can help build it internally for member states. The book revisits discourses on the 'spill-over' of economic integration, the impact of globalization in reshaping the state and generating new tools of the rule of law. It makes a comprehensive comparison - the European Union, Africa Union and MERCOSUR - showing the uneven pathways to rule of law in various contexts.

The Development of the Rule of Law in ASEAN: The State and Regional Integration

Preferential trade agreements are an important feature of the global trade system. Several questions, ranging from the rationale for preferential arrangements to their impact on members, non-members and the broader multilateral trade system, are at the forefront of academic and policy debates in trade policy. This paper presents a new database that offers a detailed assessment of the content of preferential arrangements, examining the coverage and legal enforceability of provisions regulating a large set of policy areas. The database provides information on 279 agreements signed by 189 countries between 1958 and 2015. The analysis of the data confirms one of the key insights in the literature: preferential trade agreements are becoming deeper over time. A growing number of these treaties regulate an extended set of policies, frequently with legally enforceable provisions, in areas under the current World Trade Organization mandate and in areas outside the current World Trade Organization mandate, especially competition policy, investment, movements of capital, and intellectual property rights protection. Accounting for the changing scope of preferential trade agreements is essential to gain a more complete and accurate understanding of where the global trading system is going and how its governance can be improved.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/5AFF0348A8F68471A2A258392F2B83A1/S1474745618000071a.pdf/div-class-title-the-content-of-preferential-trade-agreements-div.pdf

The Content of Preferential Trade Agreements

tive dynamics between law and diplomacy on international trade and investment. It brings together lawyers and political scientists from Europe and Asia in an interdisciplinary effort at tracing the respective roles of law and diplomacy in the relations of the European Union (EU) with its trade and investment partners in Asia. Focusing on trade and investment relations with Asia, the EU presents a particularly interesting case, as it has been a strong proponent of a rules-based international economic order for years and a frequent user of the formal procedures established in international treaties in case of disputes. At the same time, it has kept diplomatically active to adjust dispute management and international agreements to the needs and demands of the partners involved. Furthermore, not only is this region of crucial importance due to the presence of both vigorous emerging economies, like China, India and Vietnam, and more established partners, like Japan, EU–Asia relations also present a broad set of economic disputes and recent negotiation efforts analyzed in the contributions to this volume. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of international trade/economic law, EU politics, EU external relations (law), international relations, diplomacy and more broadly to international relations and Asian studies.

Law and Diplomacy in the Management of EU–Asia Trade and Investment Relations

Policy and action.

The ‘Wallonian Saga’ has illustrated a number of structural weaknesses of the European Union as an external treaty-maker in the field of EU Common Commercial Policy that concern issues of both democratic representation and effectiveness of EU multilevel governance. The legal question of competence that determines the Union’s power to conclude external commercial treaties by itself or, in the alternative, jointly with the member states will be clarified by the CJEU in its forthcoming judgement in Opinion 2/15. We provide an overview of the relevant CJEU case law and the main issues that arose during the Court’s hearing in the Opinion 2/15 procedures; discuss the law and practice of the provisional application of international treaties by the EU and legal avenues that enable the entry into force of a mixed agreement despite its rejection by an individual member state. We argue in favour of adjusting the scope of future EU trade and investment agreements to the realm of EU exclusive competences as clarified by the CJEU to remedy the functional deficiencies of EU treaty-making that were exposed in the ‘CETA-drama’. At the same time, we emphasize the need for – and outline a path towards – a qualitative change in EU and member state institutional practice that fully employs the channels of vertical political participation in the Union’s multilevel governance structures so as to strengthen the legitimacy of EU economic treaty-making.

The signing, provisional application, and conclusion of trade and investment agreements in the EU : the case of CETA and Opinion 2/15

ASEAN is coming of age as an international actor and international treaty-maker. To date, more than two hundred external agreements and other instruments have been concluded in the name of ASEAN. This book provides the first systematic account of the legal framework governing ASEAN's burgeoning external relations practice. It focuses in depth on ASEAN's wide-ranging mandate to promote its values and principles in the wider region and beyond, as well as the highly intergovernmental, and at times haphazard, handling of the bloc's relations with the outside world. Furthermore, it reveals that there are two basic meanings of ASEAN in its international dealings, which have important implications under international law: ASEAN as an international organisation with its own legal personality and ASEAN as the collectivity of its member states. This timely and thoughtful book is a valuable resource for practitioners and scholars of international law, ASEAN law, international relations, regional integration and governance.

ASEAN's External Agreements: Law, Practice and the Quest for Collective Action

This study seeks to enhance the understanding of ASEAN’s external preferential trade agreements (PTA) in context of the recent growth of economic regionalism in East Asia. First, the paper compares the content of ASEAN’s five plurilateral PTAs with China, Korea, Japan, India, Australia, and New Zealand with the status quo of ASEAN’s internal economic integration. In a second step, the paper compares ASEAN’s plurilateral agreements and ASEAN’s internal integration with the content of six bilateral PTAs that individual ASEAN member states have concluded with Japan. The empirical findings demonstrate that the ambition of ASEAN’s five plurilateral agreements finds its upper limits in the substantive content of ASEAN’s internal economic integration. Within these limits, the coverage and depth of commitments varies considerably in correlation with the intensity of trade between ASEAN and the respective external partner. Moreover, the comparison shows that bilateral PTAs between six individual ASEAN member states and Japan go significantly beyond the status quo of ASEAN’s internal integration and exceed the coverage and depth of ASEAN’s external plurilateral PTAs. The author contends that the coverage and depth of ASEAN member states’ plurilateral PTAs is limited by the structural heterogeneity of the signatories and, as a result, a relatively high diversity of policy preferences. Bilateral PTAs between ASEAN member states and the same external partners result in deeper commitments than the plurilateral accords, because of both a higher common denominator among the parties to the agreements and the free-rider problem that persists in plurilateral negotiation settings. Moreover, it is argued that the coverage and depth of the agreements is a function of the intensity of trade among the parties: high trade intensity results in deeper and more comprehensive agreements that tackle 21st century trade issues, whereas low trade intensity results in shallow agreements that aim to reduce first-generation trade barriers. These hypotheses, which are fully verified by the empirical findings of this study, allow for important conclusions about the role of ASEAN member states - collectively and individually - in current and future economic integration initiatives such as ASEAN 6, the TPP, or EU-ASEAN PTA negotiations.

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Beyond Market Access? The Anatomy of ASEAN’s Preferential Trade Agreements

International Trade Observatory and Relex Working Group. Department of Law, Working Group on EU External Relations.

EU preferential trade agreements : commerce, foreign policy and development aspects

The latest generation of Preferential Trade Agreements (PTA) features a diversity of ‘deep integration’ provisions, which mandate a wide range of border and behind-the-border regulatory and institutional reforms in areas such as food safety and technical standards, customs administration, government procurement, competition policy, or services liberalization. The implementation of such obligations frequently presents developing countries with major challenges, as they face varieties of domestic structural and behavioral constraints. With a view to a better understanding of such challenges and how they can be effectively addressed, the World Bank has launched a series of case studies on PTA implementation in a dozen selected developing countries from around the world. This paper summarizes the main results of a forthcoming report, which provides an overview of the findings of the country case studies with respect to the implementation of PTA provisions in seven complex border and behind-the-border policy areas. Drawing from the empirical evidence of the case studies and the conclusions of modern policy implementation theory, it is suggested that the challenges associated with PTA implementation in developing countries can, at least partially, be addressed through ‘built-in’ flexibilities, i.e. the customization of PTA rule design to country specific structural and behavioral characteristics, and the establishment of effective institutional mechanisms that are equipped with strong mandates to monitor, analyze, support, and adjust implementation processes over time.

David Kleimann

Papers

The signing, provisional application, and conclusion of trade and investment agreements in the EU : the case of CETA and Opinion 2/15

ASEAN's External Agreements: Law, Practice and the Quest for Collective Action

Beyond Market Access? The Anatomy of ASEAN’s Preferential Trade Agreements

EU preferential trade agreements : commerce, foreign policy and development aspects

The Challenge of Implementing Preferential Trade Agreements in Developing Countries – Lessons for Rule Design