CYIL vol. 8 (2017)

ELISA BARONCINI CYIL 8 ȍ2017Ȏ mega-deals or mega-regionals 3 like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), 4 the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), 5 the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), 6 or the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). 7 accessed on 10 June 2017). RTAs’ activity has thus transcended regional boundaries, a situation which has also been recorded by the WTO Secretariat, in its WTO Trade Report 2011: “[o]ne half of the PTAs [Preferential Trade Agreements] currently in force are not strictly “regional”. The advent of cross-regional PTAs has been particularly pronounced in the last decade. The trend towards a broader geographical scope of PTAs is even more pronounced for those PTAs that are currently under negotiation or have recently been signed (but are not yet in force). Practically all of these are of the cross-regional type” (World Trade Report 2011, The WTO and Preferential Trade Agreements: From Co-existence to Coherence , WTO Official Publications, Geneva, 2011, p. 6). However, in spite of the fact that in this official publication the WTO Secretariat used the expression “Preferential Trade Agreements” (!), in the official page of the WTO website and the official WTO documents, the WTO Secretariat and WTO Members continue to use, within the Marrakesh legal framework, the term of RTAs also for economic integration treaties regarding countries not belonging to the same region (see the official WTO webpage Regional Trade Agreements and Preferential Trade Arrangements at https://www.wto.org/english/ tratop_e/region_e/rta_pta_e.htm, accessed in January 2016, and note that, in spite of the WTO World Trade Report 2011 , the WTO Secretariat uses the expression “Preferential Trade Arrangements ” (PTAs) for the unilateral trade preferences granted by developed WTOMembers to WTO developing countries as foreseen by the Enabling Clause). Beyond WTO Members’ diplomats, also scholars and practitioners converge on the WTO terminological approach, and therefore we use in the present article the expression “Regional Trade Agreements” as including economic integration treaties having a cross-regional character. On this important lexical aspect see VAN DEN BOSSCHE, Peter, ZDOUC, Werned, The Law and Policy of the World Trade Organization , Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2013, pp. 648-649. 3 See BACCHUS, James, Foreword , in LESTER, Simon, MERCURIO, Bryan, BARTELS, Lorand (eds.), Bilateral and Regional Trade Agreements – Commentary and Analysis , Second Edition, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2015, pp. xiii-xv. 4 The TPP, signed on 4 February 2016 in Auckland, until 23 January 2017 had 12 Contracting parties, i.e. Japan – the only country to have already ratified the Pact – Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore, Brunei, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico, Chile, Peru, and the United States, However, on 23 January 2017, the new US President Trump signed a Presidential Memorandum on the withdrawal of the North-American country. See Presidential Memorandum Regarding Withdrawal of the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership Negotiations and Agreement, January 23, 2017, in Federal Register , 25 January 2017, p. 8497. For the text of TPP see the official website of the Unites States Trade Representative at the link https://ustr.gov/tpp/ (accessed on January 2017). 5 Such Agreement between the EU and Canada has been signed on 30 October 2016 in Brussels. Bill C-30, the legislation to implement CETA in Canada, was introduced in the House of Commons on October 31, 2016, and passed third reading in the House of Commons on February 14 2017; Bill C-30 was then introduced in the Senate on February 14, 2017. On 15 February 2017, the European Parliament voted by a margin of 408 to 254 to approve CETA. See BLANCHFIELD, Mike, Trudeau Brussels-bound to sign CETA on Sunday , YorkRegion.com , 28 October 2016; Prime Minister Trudeau welcomes the European Parliament’s approval of the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement and Strategic Partnership Agreement, Ottawa, 15 February 2017; CETA: MEPs back EU-Canada Trade Agreement , Brussels, 15 February 2017. For the text cf. Council Decision (EU) 2017/37 of 28 October 2016 on the signing on behalf of the European Union of the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between Canada, of the one part, and the European Union and its Member States, of the other part, Official Journal of the European Union , L11/1, 14 January 2017. 6 For a presentation and the texts of the negotiating documents on TTIP see the official website of the European Commission at the link http://ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/in-focus/ttip/index_en.htm (accessed on January 2017). 7 The RCEP is a proposed free trade agreement (FTA) between the ten member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) (Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam) and the six states with which ASEAN has existing free trade agreements (Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand). For a presentation of the RCEP negotiation see the text published by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade of the Australian Government at the link http://dfat.gov.au/trade/ agreements/rcep/Pages/regional-comprehensive-economic-partnership.aspx (accessed on January 2017).

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