For several years now, the European Parliament has been calling for better enforcement of environmental and labour provisions in the EU's FTAs. Recently, the topic entered the political limelight within Member States. Private stakeholders and academic observers have pointed out weaknesses in the...

The EU’s weak promotional policy towards sustainability in its free trade arguments isup for revision. Labour and environmental standards need to be tightened. They weregiven a boost on balance by a remarkable panel ruling of January 2021 in the longstandingEU–Korea labour dispute....

Between 2007 and 2008, the price of several basic food products spiked suddenly, leaving millions of people without economic access to sufficient food. During the crisis, World Trade Organization (WTO) law was unable to avoid that the use of export restrictions by influential exporting countries...

The European Union has been increasingly active for more than a decade in the conclusion of free trade agreements (FTAs) directly with partner countries and outside the WTO. This has brought to the conclusion of some very large free trade agreements such as the CETA with Canada or the more...

On the 6th of November 2015 the European Commission unveiled a proposal for the inclusion in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership of a clause dedicated to sustainable development which also refers to several international labour rights instruments. The European Commission defined...

The commitments entered into in the WTO Telecommunications Agreement include a fairly elaborate set of principles designed to encourage and protect competition in this newly liberalising market. This paper analyses these commitments, to see first of all what they mean for the telecommunications...

The mechanism of Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) allows private foreign investors to challenge government measures before an ad hoc international arbitral tribunal. ISDS has been in existence for a long time. Yet recently this mechanism has proven very controversial, notably in the...