From Andrew Mitchell:
Readers may be interested to read the following draft papers that I have recently co-authored with Tania Voon on the impact of WTO law on two ambitious new Australian schemes. The first paper focuses on the application of the GATS (and related obligations under Australia’s preferential trade agreements) to Australia’s National Broadband Network, raising some potential concerns about its WTO-consistency. The second paper focuses on the application of the TRIPS Agreement, the TBT Agreement, and the GATT 1994 on Australia’s draft legislation for the mandatory plain packaging of tobacco products, critically analysing claims of inconsistency with those agreements. These two schemes are the subject of intense controversy in Australia at the moment, and they have significant broader implications for other countries and international economic law more generally, for example as evidenced by the launching of an investment treaty claim against Australia by Philip Morris in relation to plain packaging, as noted by Simon Lester in an earlier post here.
