Can a WTO Member discriminate against foreign suppliers of services located in jurisdictions that refuse to share information with a government to permit it to determine if its nationals engage in tax evasion? Does it matter if the Member uses standards developed by an international body as the...

The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) has been at the epicenter of public discussions due to its possibly adverse effects on the domestic regulation of public services. While the GATS has an admittedly broad scope, its ‘bite’ largely depends on commitments undertaken by WTO...

The current financial upheaval has brought about a reconsideration of regulatory and corporate practices in the financial sector. This paper claims that the current multilateral framework regulating services, that is, the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), should be revisited to...

This paper presents the results of a four-year project tackling several issues relating to multilateral and preferential trade in services. One of the underlying organising principles of our research on services trade has been a presumed fault line between the innate coherence that is achieved...

In the occasion of the US - Gambling ruling, this paper attempts to draw the dividing line between the four most important, from a liberalisation viewpoint, GATS provisions that appear to overlap in several instances, i.e. Articles VI, XVI, XVII, and XVIII. After demarcating the purview of these...

A necessity test is a tool that reflects the balance between two potentially conflicting interests or challenges - the one being primarily domestic in nature, the other more international or multilateral in character. The domestic challenge stems from each country's prerogative to regulate in...

Market access is the most important liberalizing principle in the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). It entails a general prohibition of quantitative restrictions, which however is conditional on commitments undertaken by Members in their respective Schedules of Commitments. Case-law...

The multilateral legal framework governing trade in services -- Barriers to trade in services -- Domestic regulations and the GATS -- Creating a horizontal necessity test for services -- Transparency and domestic regulations in services

Strengthening ties with Africa has become a top priority for the current geopolitical European Commission. The focus on Africa is not new: Since 2004, the European Neighbourhood Policy has gradually developed a framework for political dialogue and reforms in Northern African countries, which...