Ineffectual legal-assistance cooperation increasingly prompts governments to apply laws extraterritorially or to force data localisation, with dire consequences for the free flow of data and the global economy. As a result, different layers of national laws counteract and sometimes contradict...

The crisis-struck EU finds it increasingly difficult to engage in trade negotiations with large-sized economies that would have a meaningful impact on growth. Some parts of the European car industry are opposing a FTA with Japan due to defensive interests following the crisis in EU car...

While there is an increasing demand for a discipline in the next generation FTAs that restricts SOEs in international trade, there is less debate on the proliferation of sovereign patent funds (SPFs) that are increasingly using intellectual property to engage in discriminatory industrial policy...

Given the unsatisfactory deployment of fibre based Next Generation Access (NGAs) networks in the EU, the European Commission proposes in a draft recommendation from December 2012 that wholesale prices for access to the copper networks should be between €8-10. This means that the former...

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) was launched with highest of ambitions. Yet after more than 500 days of negotiations, the results are plainly discouraging. The EU and the US misunderstood each other's intention on market access, and deteriorated into retaliatory...

This paper concerns Europe’s ability to continue its trade strategy into large scale FTAs that are necessary to sustain EU industrial capacities. The first challenge for Europe is the EU- Japan FTA, whose merits have been met with scepticism due to Japan's lack of openness. Such notions are...

A new trade war is looming as the EU is now embarking on its first countervailing duty (CVD) against Chinese subsidies over coated fine paper. As the EU gives a significant amount of subsidies to local production, China is not short of sectors to retaliate against - especially as the evidence in...

Four years after the launch of Global Europe - the European Union's trade strategy from 2006 - policymakers are now confronted with the first negotiated agreement with one of the rising economic powers in the Far East. The EU-Korea Free Trade Agreement (hereafter EUKOR) is the first of Europe's...