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Internet is a global market place. The rapid development of the Internet, and especially of Internet-based commerce, has largely taken place outside the standard trade-regulatory frameworks that cover most other forms of cross-border commerce. As the size of the Internet markets has grown, and as their contribution to the overall economy has become more pronounced, more attention has been given to regulatory concerns, such as traderestrictive measures, damaging the climate of trade and investment in the fields of e-commerce, informationbased services and online transmissions. One such measure is the blockage of access to websites. This paper suggests that many WTO member states are legally obliged to permit an unrestricted supply of crossborder Internet services. And as the option to selectively censor rather than entirely block services is available to at least some of the most developed censorship regimes (most notably China), there is a good chance that a panel might rule that permanent blocks on search engines, photo-sharing applications and other services are inconsistent with the GATS provisions, even given morals and security exceptions. Less resourceful countries, without means of filtering more selectively, and with a censorship based on moral and religious grounds, might be able to defend such bans in the WTO. But the exceptions do not offer a blanket cover for the arbitrary and disproportionate censorship that still occurs despite the availability to the censoring government of selective filtering.

This paper concerns China's market for medical technologies and how the Chinese state is assisting its own companies to gain greater sales at the expense of producers from Europe and other advanced manufacturing economies. The medical technology sector captures a variety of products, services and solutions which are essential to the provision of healthcare to citizens. Examples range from fairly simple technologies such as sticking platers, to complex ones, such as coronary stents, orthopaedics and pacemakers. In the last decades, Europe's exports of medical devices to China have grown robustly. On the back of vibrant innovation, firms from Europe and elsewhere have not just followed the growth of Chinese demand for medical devices - they have also increased their share of Chinese imports. Now, however, this market is at risk of being gradually closed off for European firms as China doubles down on various policies that advantage local firms, while ultimately harming innovation and Chinese patients.

Today, increases in the demand for healthcare are driving European governments to look for ways to control growth in healthcare expenditures and at the same time improve health outcomes. Consideration of ways to enhance trade in healthcare goods and services is important for governments as they struggle to find resources to finance this increasing demand for healthcare.

This paper weighs the case for a free trade agreement (FTA) between the European Union (EU) and Taiwan. It focuses on the role Taiwan has to play in the EU's economic and geopolitical strategy in Asia. Taiwan is one of the key players in the world's Information and Communication Technology (ICT) supply chains. It is also one of the few liberal democracies in East Asia. As such it deserves closer attention from the EU. But Taiwan has been overlooked in the EU's FTA strategy in Asia. Strengthening EU-Taiwan trade relations, through an FTA or other means, must be seen in the context of Taiwan-mainland China relations. Taiwan is diplomatically isolated, with decades of strained, often hostile, relations with the mainland. That has changed since the election of a KMT government in Taipei in 2008, and a major rapprochement is underway. Both sides have signed an Economic Cooperation and Framework Agreement (ECFA). Will that be a bridgehead to Taiwanese FTAs with key trading partners? Will it open the door to an FTA with the EU? (.)

This study brings together two major sources of growth in the modern economy: trade and new ideas. Trade is a crucial process to improve economic specialisation and raise the productivity of economies. It is also a channel to diffuse technology and knowledge across countries. International exchange is therefore helping countries to modernise their economies. New ideas are all the innovations, technologies, know-how and business models that gradually power the economy - the intangible assets that define a significant part of modern economic growth. They are the basis for a society's stock of intellectual property, and that stock increases every time there are investments in research and development, production methodologies, brands, novel product design, business know-how and new artistic creations. Most societies allow for protection of intellectual property because intellectual property is necessary for prosperity. Our mission for this multi-year study was to get a much better and granular understanding of what role that intellectual property rights (IPRs) play for trade, productivity and growth, and how trade policies for IPRs have developed over time. Even by our cautious estimates, the results are very clear: copyrights, geographical indications, patents, trademarks and other intellectual property rights support trade and value added in Europe, and stronger IPR provisions in Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) increase the payoff even more.

Sino-European trade relations have been controversially discussed mainly, if not only, because of the increasing European Union's bilateral trade deficit with China. As from the European perspective trade with China becomes more important, the structural adjustment process of the Chinese economy from inter-ndustry to intra-industry trade is not as intensively discussed. We show how the emergence of China on the world markets has affected European comparative advantages over time. The change in bilateral trade is compared to the overall development of European comparative advantages to highlight the features of the structural change in China. We show that China is increasingly specialising in technology intensive goods. This development is absolutely in accordance with the historical perspective on country's upgrading in technology while integrating into the world economy. Technology intensive Schumpeter goods are either of a mobile or an immobile type based on the selection criterion of separating research and production process. While China predominantly focuses on the mobile type of Schumpeter goods, the European Union maintains its comparative advantages in immobile technology intensive goods, which are harder to imitate. Based on technology intensity, the second issue presented in the paper focuses on the Chinese integration into the world-wide value-added chain, which has been fragmented across borders in recent years. Not least due to increasing FDI, intra-industry trade has become more prevalent in bilateral trade relations with China.