The Role of the EU in the ’Trade and Environment’ Debate – Transatlantic Divergence?

The paper examines how the EU shapes the ‘Trade and Environment’ debate and makes efforts to include environmental issues in the international trade law. The EU has been a principal ‘demandeur’ of environmental policy in trade discussions, and recently, the EU’s main objective is to set up a multilateral legal framework which promotes the liberalization, but includes minimum environmental standards and enables the Members to restrict imports which do not meet those requirements. The EU’s efforts led to numerous conflicts within the WTO which can be interpreted at least in two ways. First, the inherent conflict can be understood in terms of the policy behind the regulation, therefore it is an ‘ideological conflict’ between the free trade concept and the environmental thinking. Second, it is also a typical conflict of rules and appears in contradictions between the WTO law and the EU environmental measures. The paper shows that there is actually significant divergence regarding these conflicts between the position of the EU as well as US and examines these questions in the case of the ongoing negotiations on a transatlantic free trade and investment partnership agreement