Transatlantic Free Trade Agreements: Lack of EU Leadership for Reforming Trade and Investment Law ?

Ernst-Ulrich Petersmann

Revue internationale de droit économique, 2016, vol. t. XXX, issue 4, 455-480

Abstract: Should the EU design transatlantic free trade agreements (FTAs) as a power-oriented ?international law among states?, a ?democratic law among peoples?, or as a ?cosmopolitan law among individuals? as the legitimate ?constituent powers? and ?democratic principals? of all governance agents in the 21st century ? Why are fundamental rights so important for reforming ?disconnected UN/WTO governance? so as to render multilevel protection of transnational public goods (PGs) more effective for the benefit of citizens ? FTAs protecting rights and remedies of citizens have been uniquely successful in European integration, for instance by limiting ?governance failures? and ?market failures? (e.g. through constitutional, competition, labour, social and environmental law and judicial remedies). Yet, the EU neglects its ?cosmopolitan foreign policy mandate? in FTA negotiations with non-European countries. European citizens criticize transatlantic FTAs for disregarding fundamental rights and judicial remedies inside the EU. Rather than exercising leadership as a ?protector of citizens? in the necessary reforms of ?disconnected UN/WTO governance? of transnational PGs by designing FTAs among democracies as ?cosmopolitan international law?, the EU institutions prioritize bureaucratic self-interests in reducing legal, democratic and judicial accountability vis-à-vis citizens in the trade policy area, thereby aggravating the EU?s legitimacy ? and rule-of-law-crises.

Keywords: constitutionalism; cosmopolitan law; EU Charter of Fundamental Rights; free trade agreements; public goods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.cairn.info/load_pdf.php?ID_ARTICLE=RIDE_304_0455 (application/pdf)
http://www.cairn.info/revue-internationale-de-droi ... -2016-4-page-455.htm (text/html)
free

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cai:riddbu:ride_304_0455

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Revue internationale de droit économique from De Boeck Université
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jean-Baptiste de Vathaire ().