Les normes privées intéressent le droit international à un double titre : se développant en marge du système interétatique classique, elles constituent l’un des visages d’une régulation privée transnationale émergente et soulèvent la question théorique de leur statut en droit international. Par ailleurs, leurs effets sur le commerce international (et particulièrement le fait qu’elles constituent un obstacle aux exportations des PED vers les marchés occidentaux), conduisent à s’interroger sur l’opportunité et les modalités de leur réglementation par le droit international des échanges. En dépit de leur diversité empirique qui rend difficile toute tentative de systématisation et de qualification juridique, nous considérons que la qualité des produits, qui constitue le fondement téléologique commun des normes privées, permet d’en justifier l’unité théorique et de les considérer comme un phénomène juridique à part entière. Nous démontrerons que les normes privées sont l’une des manifestations d’un droit transnational se développant en parallèle du droit interétatique « classique » et qu’elles jouissent par conséquent d’un statut juridique propre. De ce fait, leurs rapports avec la branche du droit international qu’elles intéressent le plus directement, le droit international des échanges, ne peuvent se limiter à l’approche classique de réglementation (ou approche « répressive », en ce qu’elle a pour seul but d’en limiter les effets restrictifs pour le commerce) mais doivent se concevoir dans une optique de coordination. / The recent proliferation of private standards is not only of growing interest to economists who seek to evaluate its impact on trade flows; it is also relevant to international law, particularly to international economic law, in a double perspective. First, from the perspective of legal theory, the legal status of private standards has still to be determined. Second, from an empirical standpoint, private standards have the potential to negatively impact the access of developing countries to the markets of developed countries. This raises the question of the opportunity and modalities of submitting them to the disciplines of the WTO Agreements. This study demonstrates that private standards are one of the expressions of broader ‘transnational law’, a body of law that has been developing in parallel to ‘traditional’ state-centered international law. This implies that international law cannot merely consider private standards as an object to be disciplined; rather, the traditional ‘repressive’ approach should be rejected in favor of a more collaborative approach stressing the interrelations between the two bodies of norms as well as possible forms of coordination.

This thesis the Reform of the WTO Dispute Settlement System, deals with urgent questions about the most important system resolution in international economic law. The WTO Dispute Settlement was established in 1995 and since then it has become a prime example of evolution in the field of international dispute resolution. The system itself has indeed its flaws and therefore its critics. Even its "founding fathers" indented to conduct a reform of the mechanism after few years in action. However, the reform has not yet materialised. The aim of the thesis is to discuss the state of negotiations over the reform of the system, in particular in context of power and rule orientation, and to analyze possible causes of the current state. The thesis is composed of six chapters. Chapter One offers brief characterization of the WTO Dispute Settlement and its main document Understanding on rules and procedures governing the settlement of disputes (DSU), which is found in Annex 2 of the WTO Agreement. Chapter Two chronologically follows the so far unsuccessful development of DSU Revision in WTO. In international trade disputes, two ways of their settlement are recognised: power-oriented and rule-oriented. Both methods are described in Chapter Three. The Chapter Four focuses on the institutional dimension of the...

Export legal regulation of the European Union as a part of common trade policy The thesis focuses on export of goods from EU to third countries, its legal regulation on both primary and secondary level and its display in the Czech legal regulation. Subsequently, the legal regulation is compared to export legal regulation of WTO. The aim of this comparison is to find out, whether there are any conflicts between EU and WTO regulations. Hypothesis consists of two thoughts: a) Legal regulation of export of goods as a part of EU common trade policy is embedded in EU law in detail. Export of goods is regulated (special) or banned in comparison to the regular export regime in certain cases; b) EU legal regulation of export of goods is in compliance with WTO legal regulation of export of goods. The descriptive, analytical (in part related to EU legal regulation) and comparative (in part related to WTO export regulation) methods were used when verifying the hypothesis. The thesis consists of two main parts. The first one aims to describe and analyze the EU common trade policy in relation to export of goods and its display in primary and secondary law. The aspects of common trade policy as an external activity is described as well. Based on this analysis, the thesis concludes that hypothesis "a)" is true and...

Depuis la création de l'article XXIV du GATT, les recherches et les analyses liées à la relation entre le droit de l'OMC et les accords commerciaux régionaux ont été basés principalement sur cet article et sur la recherche pour la compatibilité des ACR avec les conditions et les critères proposés par ce dernier. Autres dispositions liés au même thème ont été créés, comme l'article V de l'AGCS et la Clause d'habilitation, qui cherchent à couvrir le commerce des services dans ces accords et regarder d'octroi de préférences en fonction du niveau de développement des Membres de l'OMC. Avec le temps, il a été constaté que l'application de ces dispositions et procédures d'évaluation de la compatibilité n'ont pas eu l'effet souhaité par les négociateurs des règles de l'OMC. Les ACR ont continué à se multiplier en parallèle avec le système de l'OMC et des relations de complémentarité, de concurrence et de conflit ont été établis entre eux. Face à l'inefficacité d'articuler les ACR avec le droit de l'OMC uniquement pour l'utilisation de dispositions conçus pour cela, on doit chercher dans d'autres dispositions de l'OMC, des outils pour atteindre cet objectif. En outre, ces dispositifs permettent l'utilisation de règles de droit international public dans certaines limites et ces règles peuvent être très utile pour l'articulation des ACR et de droit de l'OMC. Pour ce faire, il faut diviser l'analyse en deux phases, la première de recherche d'une articulation normatif et la seconde portait sur le traitement de la multiplicité des fora / Since the creation of article XXIV of the GATT, research and analysis related to the relationship between WTO law and Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) have been based primarily on this article and the search for compatibility of RTAs with conditions and criteria proposed by the latter. Other provisions related to the same theme were created, such as Article V of the GATS and the Enabling Clause, that seek to cover trade in services in these agreements and look for the granting of preferences based on the level of development between WTO Members. However, over time, the application of these provisions and procedures for assessing the compatibility have not reached the desired effect by the negotiators of WTO rules. The RTAs continued to increase in parallel with the WTO system and complementary relationships, competition and conflicts have been established between them. The ineffectiveness to articulate RTAs with WTO law solely using the article XXIV of the GATT leads us to search for new legal tools to achieve this articulation. More particularly, these tools allow us to use the rules of public international law within certain limits and may be very useful for the articulation between RTAs and WTO law. This research of legal tools is divided in two phases: the first one analyzes normative tools for articulation and the second one analyzes the treatment of multiple fora. Some of the items to be discussed will be the limitation of standards in the WTO, the rules of interpretation of WTO law and the attractiveness of the DSB for resolving conflicts among Members of the Organization

Katarína Jakabová Abstract ABSTRACT Procedural aspects of the dispute settlement in international economic law The dispute settlement in the international economic law of nowadays takes place under more institutionalized mechanism as in the past half-century. The aim is clear: better enforceability of the law (of the award) based on the fast and efficient "under one roof" procedure. This thesis focuses on the procedural aspects of the dispute settlement within the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Each of these three organizations has its own special dispute settlement procedure, which is above all distinctive from the international trade law by having at least one (member) state as a party to a dispute. I have chosen WTO because it regulates the disputes on a state-state level arising from all the WTO agreements between all WTO members, which makes it the biggest (and very effective, let's admit) dispute settling platform worldwide. ICSID is the first and most popular mixed arbitration allowing a non-state party (an investor) to be a party to a dispute. And finally, NAFTA, even if it is on a substantial level complementing the WTO agreements, represents their competitive version on the...

Daniel Conk 5 January 2012 Thesis Abstract This thesis is an empirical research on the impact that preferential trade agreements have on the welfare of individuals and nation-states. As the number of preferential trade agreements has been growing steadily, the on-going clash between regionalism and multilateralism will be a key topic throughout the research. Fair trade movements have been becoming more popular over the fast few years as some organizations have strived to raise consumers awareness regarding the great disparities among the profit margins of the producers or farmers in developing countries in comparison to those of the merchants and distributors in developed countries. Even though quantitative data will be used in order to portray the growing economic inequalities present in today s world, arguments will also be supported on grounds of ethics and morals relating to social justice.

In this paper I explore the causal relationship between the strategic economic interdependence advanced by Western democracies after WWII and the "puzzle of participation" in US presidential elections. More specifically, I seek to illustrate first how economic convergence within the West and then the transition from Keynesian to monetarist policy rhetoric reflexively diminish the degree to which US working class voters can realistically petition their elected officials regarding the most salient matters of economic self-interest. My results indicate that from 1948-2004, the working public became more isolated from their most salient economic decisions, voted less often due to heretofore unexplored macroeconomic indicators.

Agricultural support levels are at a crossroad with reduced distortions in OECD countries and increasing support for agricultural producers in emerging economies over the last decades. This paper studies the determinants of distortions in the agricultural markets by putting a specific focus on the role of trade policy. Applying various different dynamic panel data estimators and explicitly accounting for potential endogeneity of trade policy agreements, we find that an increase in the number of bilateral free trade agreements exhibits significant short- and long-run distortion reducing effects. By contrast, WTO's Uruguay Agreement on Agriculture has not been able to systematically contribute to a reduction in agriculture trade distortions. From a policy point of view our findings thus point to a lack of effectiveness of multilateral trade negotiations. / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

Les règles d'origine sont employées pour définir l'endroit où un produit était manufacturé. Pour comprendre l'évolution du commerce, particulièrement lorsqu'il s'agit des accords unilatéraux et bilatéraux, la connaissance des règles d'origine préférentielles et le cumul est nécessaire. Les règles d'origine préférentielles jouent un rôle légitime dans la prévention des déviations commerciales. L'UE a le plus grand nombre d'accords commerciaux préférentiels avec un niveau élevé d'harmonisation des lois d'origine, par exemple l'accord économique d'association (EPA) pour 78 pays ACP et le système du cumul pour l'Euromed. Comme nous savons, la subvention pour le produit d'agriculture tel que le sucre de l'UE et le coton des Etats-Unis sont la raison principale qui cause la pauvreté des PMA. Ainsi, les objets principaux de cette dissertation est veulent trouver : Est-ce que l'UE emploie vraiment sincèrement les règles d'origine préférentielles pour aider les PMA ou veut juste garder leurs avantages coloniaux historiques? Pourquoi les pays membre de l'UE contre la nouvelle politique de la commission à la CJUE après les plaignantes a pris la consultation à l'OMC par le même produit ? Comment les règles d'origine préférentielles de l'UE garde-t-elle l'harmonie avec leurs pays membres et les Etats membres de l'OMC? Pourrions-nous trouver une solution de s'améliorer ou remplacer les règles d'origine préférentielles de l'UE pour empêcher un autre cas se produire dans l'OMC et le CJCE pour le même produit? Nous trouverons la réponse à la conclusion. / Rules of origin are used to define the place where a product was manufactured. To understand the evolution of trade, especially in the cases of unilateral and bilateral trade agreements, the knowledge of the preferential rules of origin and cumulation is necessary.The preferential rules of origin play a legitimate part in the prevention of the commercial deviations. The EU has the largest number of preferential trade agreements with a high degree of harmonization of origin laws, for example the Economic Partnership Agreement （EPA） for 78 ACP countries and the system of cumulation for EURO-MED.As we know, the subsidiary for agriculture product such as sugar and cotton of EU and USA are the main reason which causes the poverty of LCDs. So, the mains purpose of this dissertation is want to find: Does EU really sincerely uses the preferential rules of origin （PROO） to help the LCDs or just want to keep their historical colonial benefits? Why the EU member against the EU commission's newly policy after the WTO member by the same product? How the EU PROO does keep harmony with their member countries and the WTO's member countries? Could we find a way to improve or replace the PROO of EU for the same product to prevent another case happen both in WTO and CJCE? We have found the answer at the Conclusion.

In connection with the process of globalization, the importance of international trade increases not only as means of gaining welfare but as a way to solve problems. The World Trade Organization (WTO) claimed this approach in 2001 through a new trade negotiation round, the Doha Development Agenda (DDA). Within DDA the WTO pledged to improve the conditions of participation of the developing countries in the multilateral trading system. Not after nine years of negotiation the round is heading to its conclusion and questions concerning the fulfilment of the development aspect are emerging. The presented thesis aims to evaluate the success of the integration of developing countries into the multilateral trading system and how the WTO contributes to it.