The European Community's Commercial Policy after 1992:The Legal Dimension (1993 ed.)

The basic objective of this book is to present a legal examination of issues relating to the EC's commercial policy.

A broad view is taken of the concept "commercial policy".

International economic relations are no longer only influenced by classic commercial or trade policy instruments, such as trade agreements, anti-dumping and safeguard measures.

The EC's Programme on Completing the Internal Market clearly reveals this (as does the agenda of the Uruguay Round).

Issues such as trade in services, technical regulations and standards, intellectual property rights can no longer only be looked at from a purely internal (national or, in the case of the EC, regional) perspective.

Moreover, as the EC's activity extends to other fields (such as competition policy services and transport policy, intellectual property) more questions arise concerning the relationship and the borderline between these policies and commercial policy.

Before the "grey zones" of commercial policy are examined, some more general issues of the Community's law on external relations which are fundamental to understand the formulation of commercial policy after 1992 analyzed. They cover the general constitutional principles governing the Community's commercial policy, the relevant recent case law of the European Court of Justice and the Maastricht results on commercial policy.

The book is based on papers delivered at a workshop organized within the framework of a Jean Monnet Action by the European Institute of the University of Ghent on 6-7 February 1992.