This article analyses the United Kingdom’s (UK) ‘trade continuity programme’. The promise that, once outside the European Union (EU), the UK would strike new, lucrative trade deals continues to be... Show moreThis article analyses the United Kingdom’s (UK) ‘trade continuity programme’. The promise that, once outside the European Union (EU), the UK would strike new, lucrative trade deals continues to be an important part of the Brexiteers’ narrative. What the UK was compelled to do first, however, was to conclude ‘roll-over’ agreements to replace the trade agreements already made by the EU. This article posits that, contrary to expectations, the UK’s continuity programme should be regarded as a success – for both the UK and the EU. In most cases, the UK managed to replicate to a very large extent the terms originally granted to the EU, despite being a smaller market and despite challenging circumstances. From the EU’s perspective, the UK’s continuity programme can be regarded as a case of successful norm internalization and export. This first chapter of post-Brexit UK trade policy shows that even a country that has left the EU still legally commits itself and its partners to the EU’s norms and values. Hence, the EU should welcome the UK’s imitation as a shared normative basis to expand cooperation with its former member state in a challenging geopolitical environment. Show less
Double case note on the scope of the EU's Common Commercial Policy and the future of "mixed agreements" based on the two ECJ Grand Chamber Judgements Case C-414/11, Daiichi Sankyo Co. Ltd and... Show moreDouble case note on the scope of the EU's Common Commercial Policy and the future of "mixed agreements" based on the two ECJ Grand Chamber Judgements Case C-414/11, Daiichi Sankyo Co. Ltd and Sanofi-Aventis Deutschland GmbH v. DEMO Anonimos Viomichaniki kai Emporiki Etairia Farmakon, Judgment of the Court (Grand Chamber) of 18 July 2013, EU:C:2013:520, and Case C-137/12, European Commission v. Council of the European Union (European Convention on the legal protection of services based on, or consisting of, conditional access), Judgment of the Court (Grand Chamber) of 22 October 2013, EU:C:2013:675. Show less
Ensuring good global governance through trade is not just a powerful idea, or a ‘global strategy’; it is also firmly anchored in the highest laws of the European Union. Promoting good global... Show moreEnsuring good global governance through trade is not just a powerful idea, or a ‘global strategy’; it is also firmly anchored in the highest laws of the European Union. Promoting good global governance through trade policy brings together two of the hallmarks of the EU as an international actor. On the one hand, it concerns the area of the EU’s most obvious asset, its economic clout. On the other hand, this relates to the idea of the EU not only as a ‘civilian power’, but as a ‘normative power’ which shapes the world around it by harnessing its economic strength according to a larger vision and based on values which go beyond the strictly economic realm. In order to capture the constitutional moorings of the mandate to pursue ‘good global governance’ through trade and to elucidate its implications, the present chapter shines the spotlights on this issue through three different lenses: historical, comparative and legal-institutional. First, it retraces the evolution of this idea and its progressive codification in the course of time. Second, it puts the EU’s constitutional ‘conscience’ as a trade power into a comparative context. Against this double backdrop, the chapter then turns to the legal significance of such norms, addressing what they can – and cannot – achieve as norms of EU constitutional law. Show less
