Past Events

Global trade negotiations are once again focusing on services liberalisation after a few decades of detours. The current wave of FTAs – notably with TPP, TTIP, TISA and EU-Japan – are driven by prospects of services and investment market access and next-generation disciplines.

The four modes of services have been a fixture of trade negotiations and research, ever since their conception during the Uruguay round. Since then, the developments of servification, trade in value-added, and technology have changed how services are actually traded, and blurred the line between services and goods.

Despite China's economic upgrade, the share of services in the Chinese economy or employment is still similar to some least-developing countries. Many doubt that employment, growth or welfare can be boosted in China without substantive reforms of the services markets.

Trade and innovation hang together. They spur growth in productivity and value added – and generally modernise entire economies from bottom-up. But they are also contested, especially by those that prefers producing comfortably behind barriers to competition and innovation. Countries with high border barriers therefore tend to have high behind-the-border barriers preventing not just trade but investment, innovation, and market-based technology transfers, too. India is a case in point: its comparatively high tariffs have for decades prevented India’s integration in the world economy – and its current regulatory practice now erodes India’s capacity to foster innovation and grow its ideas based economy.

One year after its WTO accession, Russia is becoming increasingly integrated in the world economy. Although Russia’s economy, and especially its export, is still dependent on natural resources, WTO accession has helped Russia to diversify its production and trade profile. Yet the quality of Russia’s institutions for governance is still weak and slows down the reform of the economy. Moreover, weak institutional quality hinders Russia from moving into sectors where it has comparative advantage – and it generally promotes a foreign economic policy that sometimes conflicts with rules and norms of international cooperation.

Migration is now at the centre of the European debate. But why, exactly, has migration – within the EU or to the EU – become so contested? While some argue that migrants “steal jobs” others complain that they live off the welfare state and is a fiscal burden – damned if you do, damned if you don’t”. But what is true – and what is not – about migration and its economic consequences?

The financial and Eurozone crises revealed institutional problems in the European Monetary Union and the design of financial regulations. And there has been considerable activity in the past years – in Europe and globally – to “fix” regulatory problems and create new structures to make the EMU safer. What are the consequences of these changes – have they made the EU better equipped to prevent new crises, and to address them more forcefully when they occur? Or are some of the regulatory and institutional reforms likely to create new rather than alleviate problems?

China’s leaders have acknowledged the need to move away from an investment-led model of economic growth that looks increasingly exhausted. But to get China’s economy to grow by greater contributions from innovation and domestic consumption will not happen without significant economic reforms. What is the state of the reform agenda – and have leaders of the party, currently meeting in Beijing for the Third Plenum, now raised expectations for economic reforms? And as China’s strategy to build a high-technology and innovation-based economy continues to be a source of awe in many parts of the world, is not the real story that the strong role of state-owned enterprises and industrial policy in the Chinese economy are making it difficult for China to climb the value-added chain?

The European Union is in the process of revising its trade defence policy. A proposal from the European Commission is now working its way through the European Parliament while several Member States have expressed dissatisfaction with the proposal. The package of reforms suggest a couple of discreet reforms in technical aspects of trade defence policy, but they may have a strong impact on policy and business that are – in one way or the other – affected by trade defence actions. Will these reforms improve Europe’s trade defence policy?

The European Union is about to reform its biofuels policy. A proposal from the Commission is now addressed in the European Parliament, which will have its first plenary vote in September. What direction should the EU take when it is reforming its biofuels policy: should conventional biofuels be encouraged or discouraged? Could a concept like ILUC be established without creating perpetual problems of accuracy and fairness in the way ILUC emissions are estimated and used? And will the new proposals make EU policy more consistent with rules of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) – or will policy have to be changed after dispute(s) in the WTO?