Bart De Meester

The European Union’s external relations after the Lisbon Treaty

The aspirations with regard to the Lisbon Treaty in the above-mentioned excerpt from the ‘Declaration on Globalisation’ which the European Council adopted on 14 December 2007 seem to be modest when compared to what was expected from the European Union (the ‘Union’ or ‘EU’) as an external actor in the run-up to the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe (the ‘Constitution’). Indeed, the Laeken Declaration envisaged developing “the Union into a stabilizing force and a model in the new, multipolar world”.2 Six years later, after the failure of the ratification of the Constitution, the role of the Lisbon Treaty (with regard to external relations) appears only to be to “bring increased consistency to [the] external action [of the Union]”.

Democracy and International Law

Traditionally, international law has barely paid attention to the democratic legitimacy of its most important subjects – states –, having been concerned only with relations between states and not within them. The neutral position of international law vis-a-vis a states internal form of government changed after the collapse of communism. The question of whether the citizen could claim democratic governance, made headway. The normative value of democracy has also deeply influenced the foreign policy of a large number of states: since the 1990s, respect for democracy has at times been considered a condition for recognizing a new state and it is increasingly a prerequisite for membership of international organizations. A forcible imposition of democracy is however doubtful. Finally, the article examines whether international law itself is made in a sufficiently democratic manner. The formation of international law through treaties or custom, for instance, is inherently suffering from a democracy deficit, even though some remedies seem possible. There are likewise problems of democratic deficits in the decision-making processes in international organizations. Powerful states are able to use decision-making to their advantage by using all kinds of formal and informal mechanisms. The article explores, as a case-study, the situation in the World Trade Organization.

Public Policy and WTO Law: Regulating Globalization

Globalization is the buzzword of the present decade. nonetheless, a global definition of the term “globalisation” has yet to emerge. at the very least, it can be described as “a process whereby regulatory power is shifted from the national level towards the supranational level.” The management of international trade by the world Trade organization (wTo) might be a classic example of such shifted regulatory power. what is more, the organization is seen both as an outcome and a force of globalisation. Therefore, globalization generates a primary, vertical tension between international regulations and institutions, such as the wTo, and domestic regulatory systems. at the same time, this regulatory power is attributed to different international organizations (such as the un, the Bretton woods institutions, the wTo, and others). Hence, we can identify in the process of globalization a secondary, horizontal tension between different sets of international rules and institutions. The colloquium “Public Policy and wTo Law: regulating Globalization” was structured around these two tensions.1 To paraphrase the words of Prof. david Luff2 in his opening speech, the colloquium was an attempt to move from “the first generation of trade law,” which sought to determine what the rules were, to the “second and third generation of trade law,” which begins to focus on the interlinkages between these rules and other regulatory systems. on the first day, the second generation of trade law was explored. speakers examined the interface between wTo rules and domestic regulatory regimes (vertical axis). The first session focused on economic domestic regulations, while the second session discussed non-economic domestic regulations. “The third generation,” explored during the second day, discussed the position of the wTo in the international regulatory system (international horizontal axis). in this context, the question of the wTo’s