I have noticed that The Faroe Islands have recently referred the use of threats of coercive economic measures by the European Union, in relation to the Atlanto-Scandian herring, to an arbitral tribunal under Annex VII of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
At the same time, the Faroe islands launched a trade dispute at the World Trade Organization on Monday to challenge a European Union ban on imports of Faroese herring and mackerel and restrictions on Faroese vessels entering EU ports
It is interesting to note here that, stricly speaking, this is not a case of forum shopping where a party brings its case only before the most favorable tribunal ( in its view). What we have here, is a case where two international tribunals share overlapping jurisdiction in a non-hierarchical manner, because of two simultaneous complaints.
This Overlap of jurisdiction in international trade law increases the risk of conflicting decisions being delivered and hence of fragmentation of international law. Therefore, it will be interesting to see if the WTO tribunal would take account of the broader context of this dispute and then decline jurisdiction or suspend the proceedings pending the outcome before the UNCLOS Tribunal. The answer is "most probably not".
