This timely book examines the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), assessing its effect on the international economic order and global governance more broadly. Through a variety of qualitative case studies the book investigates the implementation of the BRI and evaluates its development outcomes both for China and the countries it interacts with under the initiative, along with its international implications. Chapters discuss as-yet-unexplored cases from the ground in brand new studies based on fieldwork by leading academics, as well as providing alternative readings of the rationale behind the BRI. Questions about connectivity and the financial implications of Chinese investments are addressed, taking a balanced approach that demonstrates the complexity and nuance of these issues, and the far-from-linear impact that the BRI is having on global governance. This incisive book will be critical reading for scholars and policy makers working on China and global governance. It will also provide useful insights for officials and practitioners working in BRI countries and international institutions, think-tanks and NGOs. Contributors include: M.A. Carrai, J.-C. Defraigne, J.-F. Di Meglio, D. Freeman, F. Godement, A. Halegua, N. Kassenova, C.-C. Kuik, C. Ljungwall, S. Nanwani, T. Pairault, U. Wissenbach, J. Wouter

Since their introduction in 1984, milk quotas have become a prominent feature of the Common Agricultural Policy. The vigorous and yet at times questionable trade in milk quotas is a strong indication that its legal ramifications are underestimated at their peril. Indeed practitioners in this area cannot afford to ignore the astonishingly large number and high value of dealings in quota. Academics as well are no longer in doubt as to the importance of quota legislation and its ramifications. Milk quotas constitute a major and novel extension of Community power in the agricultural sector and represent a potent force in the development of Community law. Indeed, the Common Agricultural Policy gives rise to the single largest body of cases before the European Court of Justice with milk quotas taking a leading role. This indispensable and up-to-date practitioner's manual explores the influence that milk quotas have had on both EC and UK legislation. The author examines exactly how these quotas operate in relation to landlords, tenants, taxation and, consequently, rural culture itself. He goes on to consistently link the domestic effects of milk quota legislation to the European Court of Justice and identifies ways in which milk quota regulation is influencing other areas of EC law.

This volume examines the range of Non-Trade Concerns (NTCs) that may conflict with international economic rules and proposes ways to protect them within international law and international economic law. Globalization without local concerns can endanger relevant issues such as good governance, human rights, right to water, right to food, social, economic, cultural and environmental rights, labor rights, access to knowledge, public health, social welfare, consumer interests and animal welfare, climate change, energy, environmental protection and sustainable development, product safety, food safety and security. Focusing on China, the book shows the current trends of Chinese law and policy towards international standards. The authors argue that China can play a leading role in this context: not only has China adopted several reforms and new regulations to address NTCs; but it has started to play a very relevant role in international negotiations on NTCs such as climate change, energy, and culture, among others. While China is still considered a developing country, in particular from the NTCs' point of view, it promises to be a key actor in international law in general and, more specifically, in international economic law in this respect. This volume assesses, taking into consideration its special context, China's behavior internally and externally to understand its role and influence in shaping NTCs in the context of international economic law.

Professor Fischer presents a comprehensive overview of global trade at the start of a new century, from a national, regional, and international viewpoint. He looks closely at the four dominant and competing economic systems--the United States, the European Union, Japan, and China--and argues that the traditional we-win/you-lose national trade paradigm has been replaced by one that is more collaborative, one that is leaning toward de facto world governance. He compares foreigners' attitudes toward trade and markets with our own, using four economic models that typify world trade today. He examines the interface between national, regional, and international trading systems and between business and government, then at the prospect of global trade management in different trade sectors under the GATT/WTO and other organizations. The result is a provocative discussion of global trade today.

Professor Fischer makes it clear that the United States needs allies. Though its influence in the world trade arena will continue, America's hegemony has ended. The European Union is America's most obvious ally, but it has many problems and ambitions of its own. The North American Free Trade Agreement has solidified the North American market but it may isolate and lose South America, while Japan, China, Russia, and others are left to develop alliances of their own. All these factors raise important global questions, among them: Can American capitalism prevail? Should the United States proceed unilaterally, as it has so often? Or are regional and multinational arrangements preferable? If there is further globalization, as seems inevitable, and if American influence is on the wane, what group or organization will lead? To explore these questions and provide the beginnings of answers, Professor Fischer uses his four competing economic systems and handicaps the process country by country, sector by sector, with particular attention to transatlantic relations.

Food safety has become a major concern for consumers in the developed world and Europe in particular. This has been highlighted by the recent spate of food scares ranging from the BSE (mad cow) crisis to Chinese melamine contamination of baby formula. To ensure food safety throughout Europe, stringent food safety standards have been put in place 'from farm to fork'. At the same time, poor African countries in the COMESA rely on their food exports to the European market to achieve their development goals yet have difficulty meeting the EU food safety standards. This book examines the impact of EU food safety standards on food imports from COMESA countries. It also critically examines both EU and COMESA food safety standards in light of the WTO SPS Agreement and the jurisprudence of the WTO panels and Appellate Body. The book makes ground-breaking proposals on how the standards divide between the EU and the COMESA can be bridged and discusses the impact of EU food safety standards on food imports from poor African countries.

The existence of firms with different levels of efficiency within a country plays an important role in this in-depth analysis of industrial and trade policies in a multi-country trade-theoretic framework. Sajal Lahiri and Yoshiyasu Ono examine various industrial policies, R&D subsidies and trade policies under conditions of imperfect competition in a product market created by the presence of Cournot oligopolistic interdependence in production. The book covers commodity trade (assuming full employment) and foreign direct investment (assuming unemployment) making it of interest to researchers, advanced students and policy makers.

The Dispute Settlement Reports are the WTO authorized and paginated reports in English. They are an essential addition to the library of all practising and academic trade lawyers and a valued resource for students worldwide taking courses in international economic or trade law. DSR 2021: Volume 1 reports on United States - Anti-Dumping and Countervailing Duties on Ripe Olives from Spain (WT/DS577).

The second half of the twentieth century saw the emergence of international economic law as a major force in the international legal system. This force has been severely tested by the economic crisis of 2008. Unable to prevent the crisis, the existing legal mechanisms have struggled to react against its direst consequences. This book brings together leading experts to analyse the main causes of the crisis and the role that international economic law has played in trying to prevent it, on the one hand, and worsening it, on the other. The work highlights the reaction and examines the tools that have been created by the international legal field to implement international cooperation in an effort to help put an end to the crisis and avoid similar events in the future. The volume brings together eminent legal academics and economists to examine key issues from the perspectives of trade law, financial law, and investment law with the collective aim of reform of international economic governance.

The book provides a comprehensive overview of the European Sustainability Model which cannot be properly understood without taking into account the global governance trends surrounding the topic. The author offers a fresh analysis of both theory and praxis of sustainable development in the open-ended process of EU integration by shedding new light on the often-overlooked role that law and legal science should have within the educational and cultural domains. The monograph explores the necessity of new conceptual and methodological approaches in order to understand the emerging educational and cultural challenges when it comes to their integration and intersection with sustainability in today's society, which desperately claims systemic transformations.

This original commentary on the ICSID Convention, Regulations and Rules offers a new, forward-looking and highly practical interpretation of the Washington Convention and its associated documents. It is the first commentary to provide systematic article-by-article coverage not only of the Convention itself, but also of the institution and arbitration rules as well as the administrative and financial regulations. Key features include: Contributions from leading practitioners, academics and government officials in the field of international investment law and arbitration, drawn from different backgrounds and jurisdictions to give an exhaustive view of the topic Analysis of current thinking around proposed amendments to ICSID Rules, together with an examination of potential future developments in their interpretation and implementation Inclusion of the full text of the Convention, Regulations and Rules provided for ease of reference Detailed commentary on the Convention, Regulations and Rules, including up-to-date analysis of all significant case-law. Highly practical information and insights presented in an accessible format, ideal for use by Arbitration Tribunals. This unique and comprehensive work will be an essential resource for practising lawyers and policy-makers in the investment arbitration community. The book will also be an important reference work for researchers and academics in international investment law and international arbitration.

This book examines the growing interaction between private enterprises and public officials to challenge foreign trade barriers. Building on more than one hundred interviews with former and current trade officials and private attorneys in the United States and Europe, Gregory Shaffer calls attention to the ways in which well-organized private parties are using the World Trade Organizations legal system to advance their own commercial ambitions, and how public officials increasingly are dependent on their assistance. Shaffer assesses the historical, political, legal, economic, and cultural factors that have affected the formation of these ad hoc public-private partnerships, as well as trends in the European Union toward U.S.-style practice. He considers the implications of these public-private trade litigation networks for the effectiveness and equity of the WTO system and the stability of U.S.-E.U. relations.

Not since man set foot on the moon over four decades ago has there been such passion and excitement about space exploration. This enthusiasm and eagerness has been spurred on by the fact that for the first time since the very beginning of the space age, space travel is no longer limited to an elite group of highly trained and well-disciplined military officers and test pilots. Instead, we must understand that the possibility of commercial space travel is already on our horizon and that it comes with a number of significant practical and moral challenges. Our level of scientific development and ability to influence international affairs and policy confers upon us an obligation to study the ethical, legal and social considerations associated with space exploration and understanding the potential consequences from the beginning is critical. This volume provides the first comprehensive and unifying analysis concerning the rise of private space exploration, with a view toward developing policy that may influence real-world decision making. The plethora of questions demanding serious attention - privatisation and commercialisation, the impact on the environment, health futures, risk assessment, responsibility and governance - are directly addressed in this scholarly work.

The tremendous growth in foreign direct investment (FDI) in Africa comes at a time when the field of international investment law and arbitration is witnessing a renewal. The investment has led to big business for law firms in the area of investment arbitration and the last decade has witnessed an increased number of investment treaties, proliferating investment disputes, the rise of mega- regional trade agreements and the negotiation of mega- regional infrastructure projects. Yet, while the argument in support of investment treaties as instruments to attract foreign direct investment is highly contested, many African countries are no doubt becoming more aware of the need to reshape the international investment architecture. This volume explores trends in FDI on the African continent, the benefits and challenges that FDI presents for African States, and Africa's participation in the international investment law regime. Featuring contributions from leading African international lawyers, arbitrators, jurists, academics, and litigation experts, this landmark volume is the first of its kind of explore African perspectives in international investment law. Hodu and Mbengue bring together non-mainstream approaches to the debate on the nexus between foreign investment and development, addressing key conceptual issues that will define contemporary international investment law for decades to come. With insights and critical comments on the challenges of Africa's foreign investment climate and international investment law, this timely collection is essential reading for academics, students, and practitioners alike. -- .

Since 1995 there has been intense debate about whether the WTO Agreement is just. Many observers point to the association of the treaty with intensive interdependence and the disruptive effects of globalization to assert that it is unjust. Nevertheless, justice in sovereign terms is different from justice in human terms. This book puts forward a theory of WTO law to explain the difference and its implications for the international trading system. It details how economic interdependence gives rise to an interdependent view of the relationship between different forms of justice and to interdependent obligations in WTO law. It also suggests how the WTO dispute settlement system might have a residual value as a locus for transformative outcomes despite contemporary concerns about the system's political acceptability. Taken together, such insights may assist in identifying elements of a general theory of law.

This book places international trade law within an economic,political and sociological context, contending that globalisation is characterised by both homogeneity and diversity. However, while implying changes within contracting parties, globalisation only results in a 'thin' homogeneity. Furthermore, globalisation is the result of the interaction, negotiations and policies between states. From this perspective, the book attempts to explain trade policy as resulting from domestic factors. Thus, if globalisation is characterised by diversity, how do such differences affect the trade policy of states in an era where nearly everything is subject to commerce? The book focuses on the US and the EC, analysing different institutional and substantive aspects of unfair trade instruments, such as anti-dumping and countervailing measures and market access instruments. Domestically, it focuses on both constitutional and socio-economic constraints. The book considers political action prescribed by formal constitutions in a wider socio-economic context, rejecting the a-historical and structurally blind normative idea of free trade.

The 1980s and 1990s have witnessed the emergence of globalized markets accompanied by an uneven process of national and international deregulation and re-regulation. The combined activities of transnational corporations in manufacturing industries (moving towards the global factory) and the newly privatized businesses in the energy, telecommunications and transportation sectors have fuelled an unprecedented growth in global markets and international business networks. The unexpected but now well established development of capitalism in eastern Europe and the boom in China's special economic zones have added still further to the opportunities and risks inherent in the rapidly developing global economy. For lawyers, economists, and political scientists one of the most significant aspects of the emergence of global markets is the question of regulation: how to regulate market access, product safety, consumer protection laws, financial services, probity and capital adequacy as well as anti-trust and competition laws and policies. Businesses complain that regulatory requirements frequently hinder the development of new markets. At the same time greater public awareness and concern, especially over other global issues such as environment protection, have raised the cost implications of regulatory requirements, sometimes astronmically. The essays in this volume attempt to address the success of efforts in the European Community, the US and elsewhere in the world to regulate in such a way as to accomodate both the interests of business and the wider interests of the public. The volume is divided into several sections, the first which deals with the globalization of regulatory processes. Other sections examine regulatory competition in the field of company law, self-regulation and competition in US corporate law; regulatory regimes in the European Union and the issue of regulatory coordination affecting economic and social insterests. This is an original and wide-ranging collection of essays which will attract a broad readership both in the US and Europe.

International trade rules have significant impacts on environmental law and policy, at the domestic, regional and global levels. At the World Trade Organization (WTO), dispute settlement tribunals are increasingly called to decide on environment- and health-related questions. Can governments treat products differently based on environmental considerations? Can they block the import of highly carcinogenic asbestos-containing products or genetically modified crops? Does the WTO allow governments to protect dolphins or endangered sea turtles through the use of import restrictions on certain products? How can civil society participate in WTO dispute settlement? This Guide, authored by five world leaders on international environmental and trade law at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), is an accessible, comprehensive, one-of-a-kind compendium of environment and trade jurisprudence under the WTO. Providing an overview for both experts and non-experts of the major themes relevant to environment and trade, it also analyses how WTO tribunals have approached these themes in concrete disputes and provides selected excerpts of the most significant cases.

One of the most important EU consumer protection directives of the past decade, the 2005 Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, or UCPD, is brought under examination in this stimulating volume. Bringing together leading experts in the comparative law and consumer law domain, the book discusses the impact of the Directive and whether the many possible issues identified at its inception have been borne out in practice. Divided into four parts of 'Implementation, Approximation and Harmonization', 'Vulnerability', 'The UCP Directive and Other Regimes', and finally 'Enforcement', the volume examines the various policy developments, the growing body of case law, the decisions of relevant national enforcement authorities, as well as the legislative debates which have surrounded the implementation of the UCPD in Member States. This book provides a valuable assessment of the impact of a major EU directive almost ten years after its adoption, and as such will be of interest to academics, legal practitioners and the judiciary working in the areas of European and Consumer law.

Providing extensive coverage of international trade law from an economic development perspective, this second edition of Reclaiming Development in the World Trading System offers discussion of key principles of international trade law, trade measures, trade and development issues, and regulatory reform. Including such topics as the most-favored-nation principle, national treatment, and tariff binding, Lee also offers insightful analysis into new areas pertaining to agriculture and textile, trade-related investment, intellectual property rights, and trade in services. Looking at trade and development issues in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, as well as microtrade, an innovative international trade system designed to relieve the absolute poverty of least-developed countries, this book is essential reading that gives context to development interests and advances specific regulatory and institutional reform proposals. Lee lends insight into these topics with case analysis exemplifying how our trading systems have been adopted by the developing world in order to foster their own economic development.

A central development in international law is the intensified juridification of international relations by a growing number of international courts. With this in mind, this book discusses how international judicial authority is established and managed in key fields of international economic law: trade law, investor-state arbitration and international commercial arbitration. Adopting a unique legal-centric approach, the analysis explores the interplay between these areas of economic dispute resolution, tracing their parallel developments and identifying the ways they influence each other on processual mechanisms and solutions. Drawing together contributions from many leading scholars across the world, this volume considers issues such as the usage of precedent and the role of legitimacy, suggesting that the consolidation of judicial authority is a universal trend which impacts on state behaviour.

Two of the most important developments of this new century are the emergence of cloud computing and big data. However, the uncertainties surrounding the failure of cloud service providers to clearly assert ownership rights over data and databases during cloud computing transactions and big data services have been perceived as imposing legal risks and transaction costs. This lack of clear ownership rights is also seen as slowing down the capacity of the Internet market to thrive. Click-through agreements drafted on a take-it-or-leave-it basis govern the current state of the art, and they do not allow much room for negotiation. The novel contribution of this book proffers a new contractual model advocating the extension of the negotiation capabilities of cloud customers, thus enabling an automated and machine-readable framework, orchestrated by a cloud broker. Cloud computing and big data are constantly evolving and transforming into new paradigms where cloud brokers are predicted to play a vital role as innovation intermediaries adding extra value to the entire life cycle. This evolution will alleviate the legal uncertainties in society by means of embedding legal requirements in the user interface and related computer systems or its code. This book situates the theories of law and economics and behavioral law and economics in the context of cloud computing and takes database rights and ownership rights of data as prime examples to represent the problem of collecting, outsourcing, and sharing data and databases on a global scale. It does this by highlighting the legal constraints concerning ownership rights of data and databases and proposes finding a solution outside the boundaries and limitations of the law. By allowing cloud brokers to establish themselves in the market as entities coordinating and actively engaging in the negotiation of service-level agreements (SLAs), individual customers as well as small and medium-sized enterprises could efficiently and effortlessly choose a cloud provider that best suits their needs. This approach, which the author calls "plan-like architectures," endeavors to create a more trustworthy cloud computing environment and to yield radical new results for the development of the cloud computing and big data markets.

International rules on trade in services and intellectual property are 'new' additions to the multilateral trading system, but both have played an important role in the system since their entry. Accompanied by a detailed introduction, this volume contains essays which cover not only the law and jurisprudence of these topics but also the underlying economics and politics behind their incorporation into the multilateral system and continued prominence. The volume provides readers with a comprehensive overview of the development of these controversial and increasingly important areas of international trade law.

The Domestic Politics of International Trade considers the issues surrounding intellectual property rights in international trade negotiations in order to examine the challenges posed to domestic policy-makers by the increasingly broad nature of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). Throughout the book the author demonstrates the importance of domestic politics in understanding the nature and outcome of international negotiations, particularly as they relate to international economic diplomacy. The book looks in detail at the intellectual property negotiations which formed part of the US-Peru and US-Colombia Free Trade Agreements and analyses the extent to which public health authorities and other parties affected by the increased levels of intellectual property protection were integrated into the negotiation process. The book then juxtaposes these findings with an analysis of the domestic origins of US negotiation objectives in the field of intellectual property, paying particular attention to the role of the private sector in the development of these objectives. Based on a substantial amount of empirical research, including approximately 100 interviews with negotiators, capital based policy-makers, private sector representatives, and civil society organisations in Lima, Bogota and Washington, DC, this book offers a rare account of different stakeholders' perceptions of the FTA negotiation process. Ultimately, the book succeeds in integrating the study of domestic politics with that of international negotiations. This book will be of particular interest to academics as well as practitioners and students in the fields of international law, economic law, intellectual property, political economy, international relations, comparative politics and government.

The essays selected for this volume offer significant contributions to the ongoing exploration of the intersection between, on the one hand, international trade law and, on the other hand, the overlapping spheres of the environment, development, labour, human rights, public morals, culture, competition, investment, and finance. The volume takes in to account the key challenges to international trade law in terms of the non-trade objectives that governments, policy-makers, legal professionals, NGOs and scholars consider when developing, interpreting, critiquing, implementing or enforcing the law of the World Trade Organization and preferential trade agreements. The essays represent leading research from the period between 1998 and 2012 and are complemented by an introduction and bibliography providing further context and insights.