Documents Pelkmans, Jacques 17 results

"It is striking that there is little or no mention in the TTIP debate so far of the US-EU Mutual Recognition Agreement (MRA) concluded in 1998. At the time, expectations of the gains from the MRA were high. One should expect the MRA to be instructive for TTIP and entail some lessons to be learned for today's attempt to lower technical barriers to trade (TBTs) across the North Atlantic. We offer an analysis of the 1998 MRA, the difficulties in the prior negotiations and those during the implementation phase, the subsequent and present status of sectoral approaches. The MRA experience revealed clearly how difficult it is to accomplish the acceptance of all relevant aspects of conformity assessment of the trading partner for the mere purpose of testing and certifying export goods on the requirements of the importing economy. The MRA has succeeded only in a few sectors. However, the ambition in TTIP with respect to TBTs is said to go so much further. It is therefore important for all those involved or interested in TTIP to learn the lessons of this early exercise in lowering TBT costs.

This paper reaches two main conclusions: i) the US-EU MRA was only partially successful and only for some one-fifth of the export flows at the time: a disappointing outcome and a far cry from the expectations of business and political leaders; and ii) the EU's attempt to ‘balance' the negotiations in 1995 by bringing in three relatively competitive sectors did not work out – it was precisely there that problems accumulated. It is critical that domestic regulators must be satisfied during and after the negotiations that their pursuit of health, safety, environment and consumer protection objectives will not be watered down in any way.

Lessons drawn include, among others:

MRAs are not about regulatory change (by definition), but if initial regulatory cleavages between trading partners are too wide, conditions become so restrictive that parties may regard them as a denial of the very purpose of the MRA.
There are incentives to opt for alternatives in the market for the formalised designation of conformity assessment bodies in the MRA and these are often cheaper and faster, while equally qualified.
Even in heavily regulated sectors such as medicines and medical devices, the narrow MRA has been superseded by near-global forms of effective cost-reducing cooperative (i.e. not treaty-based) regulatory alignment, a confirmation of the OECD approach that governments should think in terms of an entire spectrum of forms of regulatory cooperation."

"A deep, comprehensive and ambitious TTIP should not undermine or otherwise negatively affect the WTO and its signatories. Among other things, this means that trade diversion ought to be minimised and positive spillovers stimulated. The present CEPS Special Report provides some elementary quantification, which helps to understand the economic incentives for third countries to seek regulatory alignment with TTIP results, where relevant, and for which TTIP should be ‘open'. It focuses on ‘indirect' spillovers and employs a rather aggregate economic approach. We find that, of three groups of countries that are important for trade with the EU and the US, the ‘closest' neighbours (NAFTA, EEA, Switzerland and Turkey) exhibit powerful incentives to align so as to benefit from positive spillovers. This is less clear for two other groups. Of the (seven) ‘biggest traders' (in manufactured goods, for which spillovers matter most), China turns out to have the greatest interest in alignment in selected sectors, followed by Israel, Japan and South Korea. Whereas the latter three either have or are negotiating FTAs with the US and the EU, precisely China has none and remains outside TPP as well. In terms of sectors, the chemical sector followed by electronic equipment are by far the most important, with agro-products and fish as a good third (SPS issues). However, in chemicals and electrical equipment, the TTIP negotiations so far, and recent US/EU regulatory cooperation, do not indicate an ambitious approach, which could reduce regulatory barriers to market access drastically."

"What are the economic and other impacts of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership? At the request of the European Parliament, CEPS has provided an appraisal of the TTIP Impact Assessment carried out by the European Commission, with special elaboration of the underlying economic model. The methodology applied by the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) for this economic modelling is analysed in depth, together with the assumptions used to make TTIP amenable to an economic appraisal. The research paper also compares the IA on TTIP with selected previous empirical economic assessments of EU trade agreements and with a set of alternative studies on TTIP itself. In reading our findings, two central caveats should be kept in mind that affect any analysis of the CGE model included in the European Commission's Impact Assessment. First, TTIP is a rather unusual bilateral trade agreement; and second, TTIP is so wide-ranging that an alternative approach, such as the so-called ‘partial' (equilibrium) approach – already a second-best solution – would be totally inappropriate to the case under examination.

This paper is the first in a special series of CEPS reports on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). The study was commissioned by the Ex-Ante Impact Assessment Unit of the Directorate for Impact Assessment and European Added Value, within the Directorate General for Parliamentary Research Services (DG EPRS) of the General Secretariat of the European Parliament, at the request of the European Parliament's Committee on International Trade (INTA). The main conclusions were presented to the MEPs on 1 April 2014 in the INTA Committee."

"The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership will reduce tariffs and lower regulatory hurdles that currently impair trade between the EU and the US. However, TTIP has been controversial from the outset. Non-governmental organisations are concerned about lowered health and environmental standards, unions fear a further weakening of labour conditions, and economists debate whether or not there will actually be any noticeable impact on employment and GDP growth. This Forum, featuring contributions by the speakers at the 2015 Intereconomics conference, presents a balanced overview of both the prospective benefits as well as the possible drawbacks to the potentially monumental trade agreement."

"This report explores the untapped growth that could result from the better functioning of services markets in the EU and aims to bridge the gap between the policy debate and the latest empirical economic analysis in this field. The authors find ample scope for further economic growth in the EU, both from the reform of domestic services and from the deepening of the ‘single services market'. Domestic and EU-level services reforms are so intertwined economically that indeed we may speak of a ‘double dividend' and, for the eurozone, a ‘triple dividend'."

"Enforcement of and compliance with laws and regulations in the single market of the European Union are not only legally necessary, but also of crucial economic importance for business, consumers and the EU economy at large. This book provides a comprehensive overview of the current EU enforcement landscape and its functioning. The classical infringement route via the Court of Justice of the European Union remains critical as a last resort, but it is increasingly seen as very slow and costly. The new emphasis relies heavily on a range of pre-infringement as well as preventive initiatives that prevent new technical barriers from arising. They also tend to be far less costly and more rapid, informal and effective in pursuing a properly functioning internal market. These improvements are welcome news for the single market, yet EU enforcement still has problems to solve, for example in the area of public procurement."

"The European Union's internal market is the «hard core» of integration and by far its most precious asset. However a number of deep-seated factors have impeded the development of a systematic and wide-ranging academic research programme dedicated to the internal market. The purpose of this book is to begin to address this predicament with a tri-disciplinary analysis of the internal market, as scant opportunities for mutual understanding and learning across disciplines (law, economics and politics) currently exist. Internal market scholars from all three disciplines collaborated on this project, in which each chapter was read and critiqued by a scholar from a different discipline. The editors trust that this unique exercise reveals to many readers the enormous potential for in-depth and continuous analysis of the internal market and all that it entails. It also provides an accessible text for students and scholars from all three disciplines interested in the internal market."