Are market access commitments on services in Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) reciprocal or simply unilateral? If reciprocal, do concessions granted in services depend on concessions received from the trading partner in other services or in non-services areas as well? In this paper we...

Most existing commitments are confined to guaranteeing the levels of access that existed in the mid-1990s, when the Agreement entered into force, in a limited number of sectors. The only significant exceptions are the accession schedules of recent WTO Members and the negotiating results in two...

To date, government procurement has been effectively carved out of the main multilateral rules of the WTO system. This paper examines the systemic and other ramifications of this exclusion, from both an economic and a legal point of view. In addition to relevant elements of the WTO Agreements,...

Are trade facilitation measures under free trade agreements (FTAs) discriminatory? This important question has yet to be sufficiently explored by the existing literature on trade facilitation. Despite the multilateral scope and non-discriminatory objectives of trade facilitation measures, some...

Economic cooperation, the engine of relations of international economic cooperation, is an insufficiently defined, dynamic concept. The transformations of the international environment, globalization and the intensification of economic interdependencies render economic cooperation a must, and...

We examine the global ownership structure of firms in the context of the investment regime. Investment agreements extend valuable privileges to firms invested abroad. But, these privileges only apply to firms whose assets are owned in a country that has signed an agreement with their host...

The trade of the Republic of Moldova in a large extent depends on the exports and imports to/from the European Union. The EU enlargement phenomenon is placing the Republic of Moldova on a favorable position, if speaking about the negotiation of the terms and conditions for goods and services...

The international trade for wide world countries in the means more growth, more jobs and access on more products at competitive prices. The European Union is a major economy and an important trading partner for many countries and regions in the world. To stimulate growth and to create jobs in...

The EU is a world economic power and a major trading partner for most countries. All the time, this region has been interested and has acted towards a free and fair trade. The decrease and even the elimination of tariff and non-tariff barriers in the world trade are among the main objectives of...

The TRIPs plus phenomenon (additional steps to strengthen the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) tends to be attributed to the regional and bilateral efforts of the United States. This paper suggests that such a perception is mistaken. The EU certainly seeks to...