By Kavaljit Singh | Commentary | December 26, 2017
At the European Council summit held at Brussels during December 14-15, 2017, the EU leaders formally approved negotiating guidelines to move to the second phase of Brexit negotiations after confirming “sufficient progress” had been achieved in the first phase of negotiations. On December 8, the UK and the European Union reached a withdrawal deal concerning three key issues – citizens’ rights, the Northern Irish border and the payment of what Britain owes the European Union (the “divorce bill”).
The 11th Ministerial Conference (MC11) of the World Trade Organization (WTO) held in Buenos Aires ended without taking decisions on any of the issues on which the members of the organisation have been engaged on over the past several months. The organization has thus been left virtually without any substantive work programme and this should be considered as a failure of the organisation to deliver results.
Many would consider this outcome to be entirely acceptable, as the major pre-MC11 engagements…
By Kavaljit Singh | Commentary | December 12, 2017
After months of dilly-dallying on negotiating the Brexit deal, Britain is finally leaving the European Union. Last week, the UK and the European Union reached a deal on several contentious issues, thereby paving the way for Brexit negotiations to move on to a second phase. On December 8, 2017, British Prime Minister Theresa May and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker announced the “breakthrough” at an early morning press conference in Brussels.
In many important ways, the “breakthrough” has laid to…
By Biswajit Dhar | Briefing Paper # 21 | November 2017
Electronic Commerce (e-commerce) has emerged as a key issue in the run-up to the 11th Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to be held in Buenos Aires in December 2017. A number of countries across the development spectrum have backed inclusion of e-commerce in the WTO. Although the nature of disciplines that these countries favour is not entirely clear, yet the proposals strongly suggest that they would prefer using e-commerce as a vehicle for trade liberalisation in…
By Shalini Bhutani | Commentary | October 16, 2017
The 14th Summit between the European Union (EU) and India was held in Delhi, India on 6th October 2017. This was a summit that showed signs of the current changes within EU itself coming to bear on its approach with other countries. EU is keen to have an FTA with India as it prepares to lose a member country (after the British exit from EU) in the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, UK is itself eager to have an FTA with…
