EU Trade Policy: Prometheus in action?

This lecture will focus on EU trade governance in these turbulent and exceptional times. It will use EU action in the fields of industrial policy and competitiveness, and the fight of climate change as case-studies. The first case-study will focus on the recent EU initiatives with respect to subsidies, in particular the Foreign Subsidy Regulation (FSR) and the reconstruction of trade remedies to tackle transnational subsidies. The second case-study will concentrate on the extension of the Emissions Trading System (ETS) beyond the EU via the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). Drawing on the Greek myth of Prometheus, the lecture will enquire whether the EU action in these fields has been ‘clever’ as well as ‘full of various wiles’ as the Greek mythological figure was believed to be. Ultimately, these two rich and salient case-studies will enable a broader assessment of recent EU trade policy, its innovations as well as its side-effects and difficulties.

Speaker biography

Luca Rubini is Associate Professor in International Law at the University of Milan, Italy, and Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham. Previously he held positions at the Law Schools of the University of Turin, University of Birmingham (where he was Reader in International Economic Law), and Leicester. He is visiting professor to the World Trade Institute (Switzerland) and the Freie Universität Berlin and visiting fellow to the Centre of European Law of King’s College London. Sometime in the past he served as legal secretary in the cabinet of Advocate General Jacobs at the European Court of Justice.