This book offers an in-depth analysis of the WTO security exceptions and relevant rulings by WTO dispute settlement panels. The WTO security exceptions are commonly regarded as the "box of Pandora" of the WTO system, since WTO Member States can invoke them in order to justify trade restrictions violating WTO law which they consider necessary for their essential security interests. The Members of the WTO and the GATT 1947 have hesitated for decades to rely on these security exceptions. In recent years, however, these clauses have been invoked for the first time in high-profile disputes involving Russia and Ukraine, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, as well as the US, China, the EU and other nations. This has been regarded as the turn of an era in view of the risk that the security exceptions could be instrumentalized to undermine the WTO and the international economic governance system more generally. This study therefore thoroughly analyses the WTO panel reports issued in these landmark cases. It also explains the geopolitical relevance of the increasing invocation of security clauses and argues that the legally and methodologically sound application of the WTO security exceptions, which have often been regarded as “self-judging” provisions, requires a proportionality analysis encompassing tests of the suitability and necessity of the trade measures to be justified under these truly exceptional clauses.

The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement between the EU and Canada (CETA), proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership between the EU and the US (TTIP), and the plurilateral Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) between the EU and 22 other States have sparked a great deal of academic and public interest. This edited collection brings together leading experts in the field of international economic law to address the legal complexities of these treaties and provide an explanation of their core principles. In the first two chapters, this book examines changing conceptions of international economic law and the main motivations for negotiating mega-regional agreements. In nine further contributions, international experts examine sectoral issues such as the trade, investment, and dispute settlement procedures envisaged in these 'mega-regional' agreements. The book goes on to consider the progress made in intellectual property protection, the problems associated with data protection, human rights, labour, and environmental standards, issues of transparency and legitimacy, and the relationship between CETA, TTIP, and TiSA on the one hand and EU law on the other. It concludes with four chapters that discuss globalization and other fundamental questions surrounding these mega-regional agreements from economic, political science, and legal perspectives.

The relevance of the WTO legal system for environmental protection is a central topic in general international law, WTO law and international environmental law. The relationship between WTO law and international and domestic efforts to protect the environment has moved to centre stage in WTO and international environmental law. It has also spurred the discussion on fragmentation in international law in recent years.
This book analyzes these issues by examining the 'horizontal' interaction between WTO law and 'other' international law, the 'vertical' relationship between WTO law and domestic law, and the contents and the interrelations between fundamental provisions of WTO law. This study relies on established insights from legal theory in order to achieve greater clarity in legal argumentation. The main results of this analysis are applied to two topical instances of international regime interplay, namely the relevance of WTO law for international and domestic measures protecting the earth's climate and the ozone layer.
A series of controversial topics in WTO and general international law are addressed in this book, including the notion of conflicts of norms, and the resolution of conflicts of norms; the role of international law in WTO proceedings; extraterritorial jurisdiction and unilateral trade measures; proportionality and balancing of interests in international and WTO law; the core disciplines of the GATT and the TBT Agreement; process and production-based measures (PPMs) in WTO law; climate protection, protection of the ozone layer, and WTO disciplines.