Home | Databases | WorldLII | Search | Feedback Edited Legal Collections Data

Govaere, Inge --- "EU Common Commercial Policy Throwing Off the Shackles of ‘Mixity’" [2011] ELECD 774; in Govaere, Inge; Quick, Reinhard; Bronckers, Marco (eds), "Trade and Competition Law in the EU and Beyond" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011)

Book Title: Trade and Competition Law in the EU and Beyond

Editor(s): Govaere, Inge; Quick, Reinhard; Bronckers, Marco

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9780857935663

Section: Chapter 7

Section Title: EU Common Commercial Policy Throwing Off the Shackles of ‘Mixity’

Author(s): Govaere, Inge

Number of pages: 15

Extract:

7. EU common commercial policy
throwing off the shackles of `mixity'
Inge Govaere

7.1 THE ECHTERNACH PROCESSION REVISITED

With his usual wit Jacques Bourgeois in 1995 pointedly identified the
participation of the EU (then EC) in the WTO, as well as Opinion 1/94,1 as
an Echternach procession, meaning that `for each three steps forward
participants take two steps backward'.2 Little did he know that from there
on the procession would proceed painstakingly uphill, with successive
Treaty revisions shedding thorns on the already slippery path. Right up
until the Lisbon Treaty the process toward fully fledged participation of the
EU in international trade relations indeed proved to be a long and difficult
one. It might suffice here to point to the short-lived reference to `joint'
competence under the common commercial policy (hereafter CCP) head-
ing, inserted by the Nice Treaty. This triggered Opinion 1/08, which was
already, by the time it was rendered, historical in the sense of outlived, since
the Lisbon Treaty entered into force the very next day.3
Fifteen years have gone by since Jacques wrote his critical paper. The
time seems ripe to review the follow-up to two issues that he had identified
as problematic immediately after Opinion 1/94, and that led the WTO to be
concluded as a mixed agreement. First, he pointed to the `inconsistent'
off-hand limitation of the scope of the concept common commercial policy
so as to exclude, for instance, transport policy.4 Secondly, ...