An agreement on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was reached finally. The TPP negotiations involved only 12 countries, but had to go through lots of twists and turns because of a crisscross of confrontational relationships – large advanced economies versus emerging economies, exporters versus importers in agricultural trade, and market economy countries versus state capitalist countries. Achieved despite such difficulties and coming at a time with no evident signs of hope for the Doha Round of negotiations under the WTO, the successful conclusion of the TPP agreement, an ambitious trade liberalisation initiative, is surely an event worthy of celebration. One month and a half after the release of the full text of the TPP agreement, even top-notch lawyers in Washington are still struggling to ‘decipher’ what the tonnes of documents all really mean, a task that is almost impossible to be done in such a short period. But I would like to attempt to outline, offer a perspective on, and share my ‘first impression’ of this new set of rules based on the disclosed text supplemented by the summaries of the agreement and explanatory notes released by the governments of the TPP member countries, and other information from media reports. [...]
The TPP is indeed a 21st century FTA. However, unless the dispute settlement procedures function properly, it would be like ploughing the field and forgetting to sow the seeds. Have the negotiators managed to prepare dispute settlement procedures and blow life into the TPP, based on the full awareness and understanding of the significance of this agreement? Before its entry into force, it is premature for us to predict whether the TPP Agreement can be in fact effectively implemented. However, the panel composing process, which is excessively complicated and less clear, questionably assures automaticity of the procedure. Weak institutional support for the panel process including lack of a permanent secretariat and legal officers therein could be another obstacle to effective and prompt dispute settlement. I would like to share with my readers a detailed analysis of this Chapter 28 procedure on another occasion, and revisit this question after the Agreement enters into force and several cases actually arise in the future.
Full article on VoxEU
© VoxEU.org
Key
Hover over the blue highlighted
text to view the acronym meaning
Hover
over these icons for more information
Comments:
No Comments for this Article