Upgrading Trade and Services in EU and International Economic Law

International trade currently receives significant attention: the Brexit, trade wars and the implications of Free Trade Agreements on national policies, these issues consistently surface in the news and political discourse. Services liberalization has consequences for a broad range of policy areas, ranging from public utility services to the environment and immigration. The challenge is to balance the right to regulate such policy areas with the need to remove barriers to trade in services to open services markets to international trade. From the perspective of states, service trade liberalization is often both something to pursue and something to be wary of.

This book contains various chapters dealing with the question how to upgrade trade in services. At the multilateral level, fundamental differences, inter alia in relation to the intrusiveness of liberalization on regulatory autonomy, have led to a stalemate. Yet, liberalization of services trade does move forward, as numerous free trade agreements have entered into force while others are being negotiated. This raises various new issues, as the precise impact of FTA obligations on national legislation is far from clear. Conversely, in EU law liberalization of trade is much further developed revealing new problems, for example relating to the digital economy and new case law of the Court of Justice on the Services Directive. The contributions in this book extensively discuss some of the issues which arise under international law and EU law in light of the liberalization of services markets.

This volume in the Radboud Economic Law series is based on the contributions presented at the third Radboud Economic Law Conference, held at Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands, on 15 June 2018.