International Trade Disputes and EU Liability
Cambridge Studies in European Law and Policy Series

The European Union has become the respondent of several international trade disputes. This book examines the right to compensation for damage resulting from retaliatory measures imposed under the system of the World Trade Organization in disputes triggered by the EU. Anne Thies evaluates the implications of the EU's membership in the WTO for its domestic system of rights and judicial protection. Emphasising the necessity of maintaining EU standards of protection independently of the external dimension of EU action, the book offers suggestions on how the current gap of protection could be filled while upholding the scope for manoeuvre of the EU institutions on the international plane. In addition, it places the issue in its broader context of the relationship between international law and EU law on the one hand, and the discretion of the EU as a global actor and standards of individual rights protection under EU law on the other.

Introduction; 1. Setting the scene: WTO disputes, retaliation and the EU courts' reception of WTO law; 2. Liability for unlawful conduct: role of the legal remedy and conditions of the right to compensation in the EU legal order; 3. Enforceability of the EU's WTO law obligations in the EU legal order: EU liability due to WTO law infringement; 4. Impact of EU general principles on the EU's liability regime I: liability due to infringement of EU general principles; 5. Impact of EU general principles on the EU'S liability regime II: liability in absence of (invokable) unlawfulness or no-fault liability; 6. The current situation of retaliation victims and how to fill the gap in judicial protection while respecting the EU institutions' international scope for manoeuvre.

Anne Thies has been a lecturer in European and international law at the University of Reading since 2007. Her research focuses on the interrelationship between international, EU external relations and constitutional law.