The EU-Korea Free Trade Agreement as the First Global Europe FTA to Herald a New Era of World Trade?

Abstract

The Global Europe Initiative was the declaration of the European Commission to focus on the competitiveness of the EU in external trade, securing real market access. The EU-Korea Free Trade Agreement (FTA) is the first to be concluded

under this new initiative. So far, the EU has concluded Regional Trade Agreements

which were accession-oriented or had a particular focus on development issues.

As the EU-Korea FTA is the most comprehensive free trade agreement that the

EU ever negotiated, it is also a new generation FTA. Not only does it include

provisions in terms of eliminating tariffs for goods and services, but the EU-Korea

FTA also includes provisions on difficult areas such as investments in services

and industrial sectors, as well as on protection of intellectual property, public

procurement, competition rules, transparency of regulation and sustainable development. It is significant that in most areas the FTA builds on existing multilateral agreements and declarations within the framework of the WTO Legal System. WTO compliance is an important issue throughout the EU-Korea FTA. The

analysis on selected chapters of the Agreement will show that the provisions are

built on existing WTO instruments and go substantively beyond them. In the concluding part, the question will be raised if the FTA at hand is compatible with the WTO system and if it is to herald a new era in world trade, shifting from multilateral agreements to a network of bilateral agreements.