Regulatory Cooperation in the WTO and at the Regional Level: What Is Being Achieved by CETA and TPP?

Abstract

Due to globalisation and their role as enablers in global value chains, services are playing an increasingly important role in international trade. The supply of services around the world provokes an increased vulnerability to certain barriers, created by differing domestic regulation. This increase is caused by the fact that services are being supplied in various countries, at the same time, which obliges the service supplier to adapt to every country’s domestic regulation regarding his specific service. The need for country-specific adaptation to domestic regulation entails significant (sometimes even prohibitive) costs.The fact that services value chains and services-intermediates have grown immensely has implications for the global economy and the trade barriers that need to be addressed. However, the present normative framework for trade does not adequately deal with the issue of regulatory incoherence. This paper compares the approach taken in the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and contrasts its incompleteness with the new provisions in both the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between the EU and Canada and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The aim of this paper is to assess whether these two new "deep-RTAs" successfully include new disciplines dealing with regulatory incoherence.