On 24 February 2017 over 70 delegates gathered at Birmingham Law School to listen to a high-profile panel including a former trade negotiator and two eminent trade lawyers to discuss the post-Brexit status of the UK in the World Trade Organization (‘WTO’) and its future trade relations with the EU and the wider world.

The three speakers provided interesting insights, and debated, on several issues. Then, speakers in three specialized panels presented on several aspects of the world of Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs), helping to define the status quo and looking into the future, and also providing useful perspectives on the new world that lies ahead for the UK.

In this webpage we have included the video recording of the first panel (except for the paper by Ms Lilja Olasfdottir, thus fully abiding by the Chatham House rule) and the audio recordings of the other three panels, together with the relevant slides presentations.

This conference is the first of a series of events and initiatives that the group of trade law scholars at Birmingham Law School is currently preparing and working on.

The organisers: Rilka Dragneva-Lewers, Luca Rubini, I-Ju Chen

Conference slides

Panel 1: Horizontal issues - Legal Institutions, Disciplines, Political Economy 

  • Rafael Lima Sakr (LSE) - 'Rethinking Development in WTO: A Law and Development Framework for South-North Regional Trade Regimes'
  • Rilka Dragneva  (Birmingham) - ‘The EU and its Association Agreements with Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia’
  • Zoe Sohyun Lee (LSE) - 'Institutions and Variations in the FTA Negotiation Strategies: A Comparative Case Study of Korea and Japan'

Panel 2: Specific issues (I): Subsidies, Investment and Energy

  • Luca Rubini (Birmingham) – ‘Controlling subsidies in PTAs’
  • Ira Ryk-Lakhman (UCL) - 'Investment Dispute Settlement Mechanisms in New Generation FTAs: Problems and Opportunities'
  • Andrea Rocco and Natasha Georgiou (Birmingham & Reading) - 'A Call for Energy Governance in EU-Russia Energy Relations: The Path Towards the Energy Union'

Panel 3: Specific issues (II): Labour and Environment

  • Maria-Anna Corvaglia (Birmingham) – ‘Labour Standards: The Swiss-China FTA’
  • Billy Melo Araujo (Queen's University Belfast) - 'Labour Standards in Mega-Regionals – why and how'
  • I-Ju Chen (Birmingham) - 'A Critical Analysis of the Environmental Provisions in PTAs in Asia-Pacific’
  • June Namgoong (UCL) - 'The Legal Obligations relating to ILO Instruments referred to in the Labour Chapter of US FTAs'

 (Please note: these slides cannot be used or further distributed without the author’s express authorisation).