Skip to main content
European Commission logo
English English
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS
CORDIS Web 30th anniversary CORDIS Web 30th anniversary

EU TRADE AND INVESTMENT POLICY

Project description

Analysing models for future EU trade agreements worldwide

International trade and investment play a crucial role in Europe’s economy and politics. However, the challenges faced by the EU in negotiating trade agreements have highlighted the need for a comprehensive approach. With the support of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the EUTIP project will address these challenges by fostering interdisciplinary research on EU trade law and policy. By focusing on the regulation of international trade through free trade agreements with third countries, EUTIP aims to safeguard the benefits of international trade while ensuring competence, democracy, accountability, and environmental and labour standards. Bringing together leading researchers, practitioners, and organisations from various fields, the project will also analyse transatlantic agreements as models for future EU trade agreements worldwide.

Objective

International trade and investment are of considerable economic and political importance for Europe. The EU is negotiating trade agreements globally, involving the abolition of tariffs, the reduction of non-tariff barriers to trade, and the introduction of dispute settlement mechanisms. However, the example of the controversial TTIP has shown the challenges of EU trade policy. The objective of the EU Trade and Investment Policy ITN (EUTIP) is to foster interdisciplinary research into the evolving international trade policy of the EU with a view to create a significantly increased European knowledge base and research capacity on EU law and policy of the regulation of international trade through free trade agreements (FTAs) with third countries, thus helping Europe to safeguard the benefits of international trade (wealth, jobs, etc.) while addressing the challenges of its regulation (competence, democracy, accountability, environmental- and labour, standards, etc.). It is argued that the EU trade and investment policy pursued through FTAs will lead to the evolution of an entirely new legal sub-discipline closely related to and originating in EU law and international trade law. This new field of law will be wide-ranging, including aspects already addressed in existing FTAs and fields of trade and competition law currently regulated in the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU (TFEU), the relevant decision-making mechanisms, the relationship between the relevant legal systems, and dispute settlement. Moreover, the ITN investigates Transatlantic agreements as precedents and possible templates for third generation trade agreements of the EU with other parts of the world. The network is an interdisciplinary, intersectoral collaboration pooling world-leading researchers and practitioners from all relevant disciplines of law - EU constitutional, internal market, and external relations law, international trade law, and international law, as well as political science, international relations, business studies, and economics. EUTIP fully integrates non-academic Beneficiaries (Ben) and Partner Organisations (PO), including think tanks, lobbyists, regulatory bodies, law firms, US academic institutions, and an international organisation. Furthermore, the network will support and enhance the process of converting research results into policy papers through partnership with high-impact policy research units at the forefront of European policy research and policy making. The work package consists of 3 substantive work packages on (1) governance, (2) regulation, and (3) multilateralism and regionalism. 15 PhD research projects will be supervised by academics of the 11 Beneficiaries with an interdisciplinary training programme covering the legal, political and economic foundations of EU trade and investment policy and an interdisciplinary and intersectoral programme of secondments involving 18 Partner Organisations.

Coordinator

THE UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM
Net EU contribution
€ 546 575,76
Address
Edgbaston
B15 2TT Birmingham
United Kingdom

See on map

Region
West Midlands (England) West Midlands Birmingham
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Links
Total cost
€ 546 575,76

Participants (12)

Partners (22)