Tomer Broude

Kudos to the University of Copenhagen (and especially Prof. Laura Nielsen) for organizing the Copenhagen international negotiation competition. Last year the competition simulated a climate change treaty in parallel with the COP15 talks. This year, the teams from OECD and non-OECD law schools have been negotiating segments of a protocol

Trade in services is central to many of the new issues on the trade policy agenda. Policy on trade in services exists in the space between traditional trade negotiations and, among other things, a range of relatively new investment-related measures and labor migration policy. Inadequate conceptualization appears, however, to limit

The operative part of the concluding summary of the MC Chair indicates continued senior official talks during the first quarter of 2010, leading to a "stock-taking" meeting in March, in which it will be assessed whether an agreement can be reached at the end of 2010. I might

There are diverging views on what the goal of this Ministerial actually is. One possibility, that seems to be the likely one, is that the objective is not to chart a future course for the Doha caravan, but rather to figure out how to get off. Even the much repeated

I guess I'll never get used to the way the Europeans depict their revision of the Common Agricultural Policy, driven by the Union's enlargement process, as a concession in the Doha round. The French Ministers of trade and agriculture repeated it several times at a press

The marathon of Minister's statements in the Ministerial Plenary is on (you can watch them live on the WTO website, recommencing Tuesday morning). The statements are of course very short - three minutes each. Although some statements sound like shopping lists, and others like anthologies of WTO cliches,

On questions of reforming the WTO and its role in regulation, DG Lamy was very much in the minority opinion at this morning's ICTSD Panel on "Strengthening the Multilateral Trading System". In 2003, you will recall, Lamy (as EU Trade Commissioner) said that the WTO is

A few weeks ago, I conspired with Simon to apply for media accreditation to the WTO's 7th Ministerial Conference taking place in Geneva this week. We thought we would have a blog story in any case: if we were rejected, we could address the WTO's transparency;

Devotees of the US-Gambling case (not that any such devotees readily come to mind, Simon...) will enjoy mulling over this recent preliminary ruling of the European Court of Justice. In Case C-42/07 Liga Portugesa de Futebol Profissional issued on September 8th, 2009, the ECJ found that the exclusivity granted

USTR Ron Kirk was a guest at Georgetown University Law Center yesterday, and his prepared comments are online. He talks about a new approach to trade, but it appears that the only news are that the campaign positions on trade have been buried.