Suchergebnisse

Do Regionalism and the New Theory of International Trade Sound the Death Knell for the GATT ?, by André Sapir
The Uruguay Round and more generally GATT itself are in trouble. Obviously the serious macroeconomic problems facing our economies, especially the sharp increase in unemployment, are not conducive to the seulement of an agreement on the trade liberalization. However, the crisis that the Uruguay Round is experiencing is above ail structural. Two factors play a crucial role towards creating the state of relative torpor that the G A TT finds itself in at the moment : firstly efforts toward regional liberalisation have become common and sustained ail over the world ; secondly the « new » theory of international trade reflects the growing importance of increasing returns to scale and imperfect competition in modem industry. Although this theory doesn't call into question the policy recommendations of the classical trade theory based on comparative advantage, it has weakened the cause of free trade. There are several options available to the European Community with respect to the crisis in the international trade System.

Summary in English. Deals with the EEC goal of a unified internal market by the end of 1992 and with the interaction with GATT policies, especially decisions adopted during the Uruguay Round.

The European Union is very open to foreign direct investment. By comparison, despite considerable liberalisation in the past two decades, foreign investors in China's markets still face significant restrictions, especially in services sectors. Given this imbalance, the EU has long sought to improve the situation for its companies operating or wanting to operate in China. After eight years of negotiations, the EU and China concluded in December 2020 a bilateral Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI). The text awaiting ratification aims to give foreign investors greater market access, enforceable via state-to-state dispute settlement. It does not yet, however, cover investor protection (such as against expropriation). Meanwhile, investor protection is covered by bilateral investment treaties between EU countries and China, which remain in force. The CAI has been met in some quarters with scepticism on economic and geopolitical grounds. The main criticism is that it provides little new market access in China, and that this small economic gain for the EU comes at the price of breaking ranks with its main political ally, the United States. Our assessment, which focuses on the economic implications, is different. It is true the CAI provides only modest new market access in China, but this is because China has already made progress in recent years in liberalising its foreign investment regulations unilaterally. The CAI binds this progress under an international treaty, marking an improvement for EU firms insofar as their market access rights can be effectively enforced. Most important, the CAI includes new rules on subsidies, state-owned enterprises, technology transfer and transparency, which will improve effective market access for EU firms operating in China. These bilateral new rules could also pave the way for reform of the multilateral rules under the World Trade Organisation, with the aim of better integrating China into the international trading and investment system - a goal shared by the EU, the United States and other like-minded countries. From an economic viewpoint therefore, the CAI is an important agreement, and one worth having. However, its ratification by the European Parliament is unlikely while China continues to apply sanctions against some members of the European Parliament and other critics of China's human rights record.

COVID-19 represents one of the biggest pandemic faced by humanity in recent times, spreading to almost all countries and territories on all continents. Because it spread so suddenly and quickly, COVID-19 produced an unparalleled increase in demand in personal protective equipment, medical products and devices, which far outpaced the ability to increase supply. The outcome was a shortage in these products, which lead several countries to introduce export restrictions. This paper offers a legal and economic assessment of these export restrictions and argues that the current international rules – administered respectively by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the World Trade Organisation (WTO) – are ill-suited to deal with critical shortages that are likely to arise during, or at least in the early days of, a pandemic. Absent better rules and greater international cooperation, there was no alternative to the proliferation of export restrictions. The paper proposes the establishment of a new normative framework involving both WHO and WTO to avert supply shortages and export restrictions during a pandemic. ; Funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No 770680 (RESPECT).

The European Union created the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund (EGF) in 2007 to co-fund, together with EU member states, policies to help workers negatively affected by globalisation find new jobs. The EGF was a political acknowledgment that the EU, which has exclusive competence over trade policy, needed to assume some budgetary responsibility for the economic displacement arising from globalisation. This policy contribution attempts to evaluate the EGF programme after ten years of implementation and in the context of the negotiations on the EU's 2021-27 Multiannual Financial Framework. The EGF programme is relatively modest in size. During the decade from 2007 to 2016, it financed 147 cases (involving either large firms or regionally-concentrated groups of small firms), covering 140,000 dismissed workers. But only about half of the cases and job losses were related to globalisation. The other half were related to the economic and financial crisis, which became eligible for EGF assistance in 2009. Our evaluation addresses both the political visibility of the EGF programme and its economic effectiveness, and concentrates on cases and dismissed workers related to globalisation. We find the programme was highly politically visible in the sense that EGF beneficiaries tended to work for large firms prior to their redundancies and these job losses were widely reported in the media. The economic effectiveness of the EGF programme is more difficult to evaluate, mainly because the available data is insufficient. Estimates, however, suggest that only a small proportion of EU workers who lost their jobs because of globalisation received EGF financing. Unfortunately it is impossible at this time to assess whether workers who received EGF assistance did better in their job searches than those who did not receive EGF assistance. We make three main recommendations to improve the EGF programme: 1) collect more and better data on EGF cases and assisted workers to enable a proper evaluation of the programme; 2) revise the eligibility criteria to qualify for EGF assistance and the co-funding rate for the contribution from low-income countries or regions; and 3) enlarge the scope of the EGF programme beyond globalisation to also assist workers displaced by intra-EU trade and offshoring that result from the working of the single market, which like international trade is also an exclusive competence of the EU.

The economic profiles of southern Mediterranean countries (SMCs) bear some resemblance to those of south-eastern European countries and some former Soviet republics at the beginning of their economic transition in 1990. The SMCs resemble less the former communist countries that joined the European Union in 2004. The SMCs are more advanced in terms of market reforms, but less well equipped with human capital and infrastructure, than the former communist countries were in the early 1990s. The EU's willingness to underpin reforms in central and south eastern Europe and hold out the prospect of EU membership contributed to substantial growth, highlighting the long-term value of partnership with the EU. Long-term partnership has so far been absent for the southern Mediterranean countries. The existing Union for the Mediterranean framework is too weak to provide the necessary EU support to domestic reforms in the SMCs, and to ensure the desired stability and prosperity in the region. To encourage a successful transition in the SMCs, a Euro-Mediterranean Economic Area should be established by 2030.