Le implicazioni dell'allargamento dell'Unione europea per l'Organizzazione Mondiale del Commercio

The essay focuses on the implications of the widest Enlargement of European Union (2004) concerning EU International Trade Relations and the EU Membership of the World Trade Organization (WTO). The issue is analyzed from two relevant points of view. In the first part, the topic is investigated in the perspective of the participation of the ten new EU Member States to EU trade treaties: the Enlargement involves the participation of the acceding States to Preferential Trade Agreements binding EU and its fifteen Member States with third Countries, and implies even a complementary impact on the agreements concluded - before their accession to the EU - by the ten new EU Members with third Countries (such as Free Trade Agreements or Bilateral Investment Treaties). Secondly, on the multilateral side, the EU Enlargement is dealt with not only under the traditional approach that remarks the increase of negotiating powers of EU in the WTO trade negotiations. The juridical nature of the EU Enlargement – from the point of view of WTO Law – is an extension to 10 WTO Members (the acceding EU Member States) of a pre-existing Customs Union among 15 WTO Members (i.e. among the former 15 EU Member States). In this perspective, the essay examines on one side the consistency of EU Enlargement with WTO Rules on Regional Integration, i.e. with Article XXIV GATT as a Customs Union, and additionally with Article V GATS as an agreement providing for liberalization of trade in services; on the other side are taken into consideration the predictable impacts of the Enlargement in terms of trade creation effects (within the EU Customs Union) and trade diversion effects (towards other WTO Members), and their consequences under WTO Rules.