Preferential Services Liberalization
The Case of the European Union and Federal States
Cambridge International Trade and Economic Law Series

Preferential Services Liberalization offers the first, comprehensive analysis of the conditions that the World Trade Organization sets for preferential trade agreements (PTAs) in the area of services. Johanna Jacobsson provides an in-depth analysis of the relevant GATS rules, puts forward a practical method to analyze services PTAs, and applies the method to services agreements concluded by the EU. The result is a detailed examination of the legal criteria for services PTAs and methods to study them, combined with a better understanding of the level of liberalization reached by the EU and its member states. This book does go beyond the EU in analyzing the implications that multi-level governance has for international services liberalization. It proposes a new approach to study services commitments of any federal state and argues that lower levels of government should receive more attention in international negotiations over services trade.

Part I: 1. Preferential trade agreements in the WTO; 2. The GATS rules on economic integration agreements (EIAs); 3. Elimination of discrimination in EIAs; Part II: 4. Services regulation by federal states; 5. Application of GATS Article V to federal entities; 6. A review of federal entities' services commitments under the GATS and selected EIAs; Part III: 7. Empirical research on services preferentialism; 8. A new methodology for the study of EIAs; 9. Adaption to scheduling differences and economic realities; Part IV: 10. The results of the empirical study; 11. Legal analysis of the results; 12. Application of Article V GATS to the EU's EIAs; 13. Conclusion; Appendices; Index.

Johanna Jacobsson is Assistant Professor at IE University (Madrid, Spain). Her main fields of research are international trade law and the EU's internal market law and external trade relations. Professor Jacobsson holds a Ph.D. from European University Institute,Florence and an LL.B., LL.M. and B.A. from University of Helsinki.