Promoting Green Energy through EU Preferential Trade Agreements: Potential and Limitations

This article aims at assessing the potential and limitations of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) in safeguarding countries’ efforts to promote renewable energy (RE). In particular, it explores whether and to what extent PTAs recently concluded by the European Union (EU) have addressed the main shortcomings found under the World Trade Organization (WTO) law. Namely, the fact that WTO rules are currently too stringent on the use of RE subsidies while too lenient on the use of trade remedy measures against RE technologies. It argues that EU PTAs could and should have gone further with regards to both subsidy and trade remedy disciplines that enable RE promotion, substantively as well procedurally, while still remaining WTO-compatible. The article further finds that much of the potential of EU PTAs has remained untapped due to inconsistency in policy practice, which reflects the lack of a coherent, ambitious and forward-looking negotiating strategy on the part of the EU. The article concludes by identifying which approach to RE promotion in PTAs is preferable and should be consistently pursued by the EU in future negotiations