Study on the Existing Level of Liberalisation of Trade in Services
Project Overview
Location:
Argentina, Brazil, Egypt, Israel, Morocco, Tunisia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines
Dates:
December 2007 – January 2009
Funding Body:
European Commission
Project Status:
Completed
A Study on the Existing Level of Liberalisation of Trade in Services between the EU and third countries in the Mercosur, Euromed, ASEAN and Indian regions was commissioned in late 2007 by the European Commission’s Director General for Trade. The Study aimed to identify the extent to which the countries listed below have liberalised their legislative framework concerning trade in services within the context of their bilateral and multilateral trade agreements. The countries and sectors included in the study are:
Countries (by region) |
Service Sectors |
|
ASEAN
|
Euro-Med
Mercosur
|
Postal and courier services Telecommunication services Construction services Distribution services Maritime transport services |
DEVELOPMENT Solutions coordinated a broad team of senior commercial and international law experts across the 12 countries. To ensure consistency in their research efforts a series of uniform sectoral templates, designed by consortium members DEVELOPMENT Solutions and the Centre for Commercial Law Studies at Queen Mary, University of London, aided local experts in assessing the relative level of liberalisation in their country. These templates had been designed to reflect common legal barriers experienced globally in each of the five sectors, and specifically highlight barriers related to market entry, ownership and sector regulation. The results of the study included a innovative trade liberalisation guide for European trade negotiators in ongoing and future negotiations. The guide was strongly based in the context of international commercial law and included extensive analysis of original legal texts relevant to the sectors and countries involved.
A seminar was held in Brussels to ensure that the conclusions of the study were disseminated to a wide range of industry stakeholders and that additional conclusions were reached.
