Simon Lester

I've gotten to know some of the folks at Brussels think tank ECIPE over the past year, and I always enjoy their work.  Here's a new piece from research associate Michal Krol entitled "The Case for an EU-China investment agreement": http://www.ecipe.org/

From the Economist: [CETA] also takes a crack at liberalising cross-border ... trade in services in ways that previous trade negotiations have rarely attempted. ... The aim is to begin lowering barriers to trade in services just as past agreements removed obstacles to trade in goods: a worthy goal, since services generate

From my friends at the Trade, Law & Development journal: Founded in 2009, the philosophy of Trade, Law and Development has been to generate and sustain a constructive and democratic debate on emergent issues in international economic law and to serve as a forum for the discussion and distribution of

Last year, I mentioned an issue related to the meaning of national treatment that is likely to come up in the Bilcon NAFTA Chapter 11 case.  Here are some brief thoughts on the same issue from the U.S. non-disputing party submission: NAFTA’s national treatment provision, Article 1102, is

And finally, one last claim addressed by the Commission in defense of  investor state: Claim: Investors should not be allowed to challenge governments directly in international law. Only governments should be able to act against each other, via state-to-state dispute settlement. The Commission responds that: It is investors who actually

The third claim related to investor state that the European Commission addresses is the following: Claim: Investor-state dispute settlement undermines public choices (e.g. Vattenfall challenging the German moratorium on nuclear power, Philip Morris challenging Australia’s plain packaging regime for cigarettes) The Commission then distinguishes the remedies under trade

Here's another "incorrect claim" about investor state that the European Commission responds to: Claim: Investor state dispute settlement gives too many rights to companies The Commission response is, "Wrong!"   In fact, the Commission says, such rights are "limited," as they are restricted

I mentioned that, having taken the EU side on issues related to regulatory trade barriers, I would criticize the EU soon, to make sure that this blog is "fair and balanced". So here goes. The European Commission has posted a short document in which it defends investor state

I've been excited to look at a number of aspects of the Canada - EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), including regulation, investment and IP.  So I was excited to see the news reports this week that it was almost done.  Then today there were headlines like

Following-up on my post last week about the dueling U.S./EU speeches on "regulatory trade barriers", here's an excerpt from an op-ed we wrote on these issues: ... The EU focus on tackling existing and future regulatory divergences, as opposed to domestic regulatory reform, is a