The Doha Round negotiation mandate of the World Trade Organization (WTO) proposes to minimise trade distortions and commercial displacement under the cover of international food aid, without preventing genuine food aid from reaching people in need. This paper presents problematic aspects of...

The WTO Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) is the predominant multilateral legal framework governing agricultural trade. The objective of the AoA is to liberalize trade in agriculture through reductions in tariffs, domestic support and export subsidies. The AoA has not, however, ‘leveled the...

The global food crisis of 2007–08 seems to be forgotten. Media attention at the time focused on food riots in Haiti and Mozambique, while world leaders and more than a dozen international organizations gathered for several food summits, calling for immediate relief measures. But not a single...

“Préférence communautaire” is an in-built notion of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) since its inception with the Treaty of Rome (1957). Its simple objective laid down at the Stresa Conference in 1958 is to prefer community produce over imports wherever possible. Never uncontested, and...

This paper asks how World Trade Organization (WTO) panels and the Appellate Body (AB) take public international law (PIL) into account when interpreting WTO rules as a part of international economic law (IEL). Splendid isolation of the latter is not new; indeed it is intended by the negotiators...

While the TTIP leaks are not the first (nor the last) leak since the inception of the negotiation in 2013, they revealed for the first time the US negotiating position regarding certain chapters of the TTIP draft agreement. As such, the TTIP leaks provide an unprecedented opportunity not only to...

The introduction of the so-called “duty free quota free” treatment (DFQF) for all products from least developed countries (LDCs), in particular by the European Communities (EC) and by Switzerland, raised expectations of increased agricultural exports for these 49 countries. Despite the high...

<heading id="h1" level="1" implicit="yes" format="display">summary</heading><title type="document">How to Conclude the Doha Development Agenda</title>It is easier to launch a Round than to conclude it, and nice words won't do now. To save a trade negotiation which had already gotten off to a wrong start, and which has turned into a narrow lane focused on agriculture, is especially difficult...

Once more, agriculture threatened to prevent all progress in multilateral trade rule-making at the Ninth WTO Ministerial Conference in December 2013. But this time, the “magic of Bali” worked. After the clock had been stopped mainly because of the food security file, the ministers adopted a...

Tariff preferences, which are authorized under the WTO Enabling Clause and autonomous waivers, are often withdrawn on dubious grounds and without due process. This reduces much of their potential value, because traders and investors lack the predictability and security necessary to make...