International Economic Law and Policy Blog

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Simon Lester

Legal Aspects of Domestic Economic Integration: Canadian Reform Proposals

This is from a paper by some Canadian business groups on promoting internal free trade within Canada through reform of Canada's Agreement on Internal Trade: A more effective and efficient dispute resolution mechanism should include ... a domestic equivalent of investor-state dispute settlement, ... . Investor-state dispute settlement normally grants foreign

What Should the U.S. Judge in the Argentina Debt Case Have Done?

I'm still trying to sort out what I think should happen in the Argentina debt crisis case. I gather that a lot of people are mad at the U.S. judge who prevented Argentina from making payments to those creditors who had agreed to restructure the debt, allowing

CETA, Investment Obligations, and Exceptions

With each attempt to clarify the "minimum standard of treatment" in investment obligations, the scope becomes less clear to me. Here's what the leaked CETA text says (page 158): Article X.9: Treatment of Investors and of Covered Investments 1. Each Party shall accord in its

CETA Dispute Settlement: Reference to WTO Jurisprudence

From Article 14.10 of the leaked CETA text (page 474): 5. The panel shall interpret the provisions referred to in Article 14.2 in accordance with customary rules of interpretation of public international law, including those set out in the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. The panel

CETA Text: The Treatment of Water

A fairly recent version of the CETA text has been leaked. The document date is August 1, 2014. No doubt there is some legal "scrubbing" still to do, and perhaps some actual negotiating as well, but this text seems pretty advanced, and thus ready for blogging. I'

Guest Post: Russian Sanctions, Polish Apples and the EU’s Litigation Strategy

This is a guest post from Boris Rigod, who has a Ph.D. from the EUI and is currently a law clerk at the Berlin Regional Court Poland announced its intention to initiate WTO proceedings against Russia over its import prohibition on Polish apples. The ban is Russia’s reaction

GATT Article XX an an Exception to the TBT Agreement

I was struck by this sentence from para. 5.56 of yesterday's China - Rare Earths Appellate Body report (made in the context of discussing the relationship between China's Accession Protocol and the Marrakesh Agreement/Multilateral Trade Agreements): Article XX of the GATT 1994 has been

The Russian Food Import Ban under the DSU

From the Washington Post: Russia has aimed its latest cross-Atlantic swing at the American food industry. On Thursday, the country announced the suspension of billions of dollars in food imports from a number of countries — including Norway, Canada, Australia, the United States and the 28-nation European Union — in retaliation for

ISDS in CETA: Some Ideas for a Compromise

The FT reports on how ISDS is holding up the CETA negotiations: The EU struck a political agreement on a trade accord with Ottawa last year but the deal has become mired in negotiations over investors’ rights. Berlin fears that German standards of environmental and consumer protection could be undermined

How the EU Influences WTO Jurisprudence

Following up on my blog post of earlier today, this is from Tilman Krueger: the EU actively contributes to rule development in the WTO also as a litigant in the context of WTO dispute settlement and in addition to its immediate, case-specific interests. Two examples for such behaviour will now