Public procurement in EU PTAs

Woolcock, Stephen (2019) Public procurement in EU PTAs. In: Hahn, M and Van der Loo, G, (eds.) The Law and Practice of the Common Commercial Policy: the First 10 Years After the Lisbon Treaty. UNSPECIFIED, Leiden, The Netherlands. (In Press)

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Abstract

European Union trade and investment policy faces a dilemma with regard to comprehensive trade topics such as public procurement. On the one hand it is in the interests of the EU - has been the EU's aim - to include topics such as public procurement (one of the so-called Singapore issues) in trade agreements. This has only been partially successful at the multilateral and plurilateral levels, so the Eu has used the vehicle of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) to extend the coverage of procurement rules. Even here there has been resistance including from some important potential PTA partners of the EU, for a number of political and industrial policy reasons. At a time when the stability of the whole rules-based trading system is in doubt, it is, however, important for ht EU to be able to conclude PTAs with systematically important trading partners, such as India, Brazil, China and others. So should the EU show some flexibility and accept less comprehensive agreements that exclude procurement, or should it continue to work for the inclusion of rules on procurement and risk delaying or not being able to conclude major PTAs? This chapter discusses why it is in the EU's interests to include procurement and why the PTA route is important. It then assesses how successful the Eu has been in extending the coverage of procurement via PTAs before analyzing why this, like the efforts at a plurilatleral level, have only been partially successful.

Item Type:	Book Section
Additional Information:	© 2019 Brill
Divisions:	International Relations
Subjects:	J Political Science > JZ International relations J Political Science > JN Political institutions (Europe) H Social Sciences > HF Commerce H Social Sciences > HC Economic History and Conditions
Date Deposited:	06 Dec 2019 15:24
Last Modified:	15 Sep 2023 10:12
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/102822

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