Suchergebnisse

Kazakhstan has been negotiating accession to the WTO for twelve years, following a line of ex-Soviet states seeking membership. In this new, comprehensive study Brian Hindley presents a detailed analysis of Kazakhstan's long accession process. WTO membership is a matter of economic strategy. For Kazakhstan though, legitimate geopolitical concerns have come into play as Russia has pushed for deepened regional economic integration while neglecting its own accession negotiations. But, Kazakhstan's strategy of global economic integration would be better served by WTO membership than the regional alternative. Greater support from big WTO players such as the EU and the US could help the Kazakh government to accelerate accession without waiting for Russia.

The European Union is currently reviewing its policy for trade defence instruments; instruments purported to defend European producers from unfair trade practices such as dumping and subsidized exports as well as protect them from sudden surges of imports. In a Green Paper published late last year, the European Commission offers a justification for trade defence instruments but also signals an ambition to take account of changes in the global economy. It is a commendable ambition to provide a justification - an economic rationale - of the use of trade defence instruments, in particular antidumping, the most frequently used instrument. Antidumping practice is not transparent and often rests on convoluted investigations. It can easily degenerate into protectionism. An unambiguous rationale is therefore warranted to enable outside scrutiny of applied practices. But the European Commission fails to give a convincing justification of antidumping. Its overall defence of antidumping confuses the concepts of trade defence instruments and disregards basic economic analysis.

It is frequently claimed that Britain's withdrawal from the EU would be tantamount to national economic suicide. The paper examines that proposition by assessing the costs and benefits of EU membership, concluding that the net effect of withdrawal on the British economy would be small‐certainly not large enough to stop British governments standing up for British interests in Europe.