TDM Special Issue on the CETA – Call for Papers

The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement between the European Union and Canada, CETA, is one of the three landmark agreements – the others are the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) – that will shape world trade and investment in the XXI century. Negotiations were launched in 2009 and a political agreement between the EU and Canada was reached on the key elements of CETA on October 18, 2013. The signing of the agreement took place in Ottawa at end of September 2014.

CETA is characterized by the further codification of international standards of investment protection by the Contracting Parties, and the introduction of new topics in international trade in goods and services, such as the efforts to remove regulatory divergence, which has been considered as the most prominent obstacle to trade and which should considerably increase economic growth for the citizens of both parties. This objective is to be achieved through Regulatory Cooperation and the establishment of a Regulatory Co-operation Fórum.

Herfried Wöss, Fabien Gélinas, Andrea Bjorklund, and John Gaffney will be editing a TDM Special Issue on the CETA. The four co-editors invite you to contribute to the special edition on CETA with unpublished or previously published articles, conference papers, research papers and case studies dealing with the Agreement and the issues raised by any of its chapters. Of particular interest in the investment chapter are:

• clarifications brought to key substantive provisions such as fair and equitable treatment;
• the definition of investment, which refers to “income generating assets” in the sense used by economists;
• the fair and equitable standard, including manifest arbitrariness, targeted discrimination on manifestly wrongful grounds and abusive treatment of investors, and its interpretation by the Contracting Parties;
• the definition of acts de jure imperii, and CETA’s detailed language on what constitutes indirect expropriation.

Also of interest are CETA reaffirmation of the right of the EU and Canada to regulate to pursue legitimate public policy objectives such as the protection of health, safety, or the environment and a number of procedural changes designed notably to respond to criticisms levelled at investment treaties over the past decade.

Proposals or papers should be submitted directly to the co-editors by January 15, 2015 hwoess@woessetpartners.com, fabien.gelinas@mcgill.ca, andrea.bjorklund@mcgill.ca and j.gaffney@tamimi.com – please CC info@transnational-dispute-management.com when submitting your materials. You can find the call for papers on the TDM website as well as here.