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...

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 increased importance of environmental protection led to the introduction of sustainability-related criteria in standard-setting practices. A discomfort with the functioning, working methods and certain rigidities of the global standardizing bodies such as the ISO led to a mushrooming of a...

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...

Trade regulation may never have been in more flux than it is now. Other than the emergence of ‘megaregionals' (such as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership-TTIP or the Trans-pacific Partnership-TPP) and the difficulties in finalizing the Doha Development Agenda, increased...

Standards reflect preferences and values of a given society which may – and usually do – diverge, thereby inflating compliance costs for companies. If developed internationally, then substantial gains can be made through the diminution of such costs and by addressing network externalities,...

Promotion of renewable energy has become one important priority in the political agenda worldwide. However, financing of renewable energy projects, especially the small-scale ones, is not always streamlined and banks may not always be willing to invest in such projects. This fact is accentuated...

Transnational technical standard-setting has grown in prominence in recent years. The World Trade Organization (WTO) requires the use of international standards but adopts a deferential approach towards international standards. However, practice shows that several international standards are...

Agreed commitments under GATS — both general and specific — amount to substantial qualifications to the exercise of sovereignty and powers in shaping domestic regulation of services. Members therefore agreed to introduce security exceptions aimed to preserve Members’ freedom of action in...