Trade negotiations, trade policy and law-making in an era of soft law: is the EU a leader or a laggard?

This event is organised by Elaine Fahey, Professor of Law, City Law School, and the Institute for the Study of European Law (ISEL).

Digital partnerships and soft law frameworks in lieu of trade agreements are increasingly common led by the EU, Asia, US and UK.

The EU-US Trade and Technology Council (TTC) and an EU-India TTC are part of the EU’s pivot to multiple ‘soft law’ instruments in trade and technical, ie non-binding Digital Partnerships with key Asian partners, mainly leading developed economies originally part of the EU’s post-Lisbon pivot to Asia.

TTCs nowadays - similar to Digital Partnerships - have soft law structures, executive to executive set-up and wide-ranging emphasis on international law-making goals as to the digital economy.

It reflects upon its putative exclusion of parliaments through the adoption of frameworks outside of the EU treaties.

Are TTCs meaningfully evolving? Are trade and technology increasingly incompatible within trade agreements? Who is gaining and losing? Is EU leadership of global law-making issues arising from its data privacy first-mover regulation imperilled by a shift to soft law? How do other institutional actors get affected by a shift towards soft law in the EU? Are developments as to ‘EPLO’ creation evolving these issues?

Draft programme

Speakers:

• David Henig, European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE)
• Maria Belen Gracia, University of Maastricht
• Anne Thies, University of Glasgow
• Josephine Norris, European Commission Legal Service
• Fabia Jones, European Parliament Liaison Office (ELPO)
• Joseph Dunne, outgoing director EPLO Washington DC
• Alexander Horne,  Barrister, Cornerstone Chambers/ Durham University
• Rosalind Stevens, Civil Society Alliance
• Paarth Naithani, Jindal Global Law School, India
• Xuechen Chen, Northeastern University London
• Thomas Verellen, Utrecht Law School
• Alex Bakos and Christos Karetsos, City Law School, City, University of London