Talk:EU trade disputes
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The information contained in this page relates mainly to EU disputes in WTO and a bilateral dispute with China. It concludes with some opinions about EU trade policy.
The first section is not (as it should be, according to Wikipedia style guides) about the topic in the title but about the more general issue of 'trade disputes'. On this subject it is inaccurate because incomplete. It limits its treatment of trade disputes to WTO diputes, ignoring trade disputes in a regional trade agreement (for example).
The second and third sections are, in my view, a recapitulation of the material covered in the article on the WTO_Dispute_Settlement_Body. I suggest that only a link is needed to cover this informaiton.
The content of the article needs additional work. It should say more (at least in brief) about the history of EC external trade disputes and the fundamental role they have played in defining Europe's external and internal relations through conflicts they have provoked internally in Europe when they threatened to spill over into Member States' own foreign relations or, eventually, into the foreign policy of the Union.
The article needs to point to or briefly describe historically significant disputes such as the long-running disputes with the USA over oilseeds imports, over aircraft subsidies, over US DISC/FSC export subsidies (and the US challenge to EC direct tax remissions in the 1970s that created the framework for this dispute). It should mention the disputes of the 1980s wth Brazil, Argentina and Australia over beef and sugar that led, eventually, to the restructuring of the export subsidies rules of the GATT in the Uruguay Round agreements of 1994. It should mention significant disputes with India over Indian import quotas, pharmaceutical patents and over the EC's selective use of GSP trade preferences. It mentions one of the banana cases (there were three) but hardly indicates their significance, particularly for developing countries that, contrary to the impressions reported in the final point in the article, won a number of significant victories.
On the whole: this article needs some restructuring and additional detail, in my view. Do others, or current authors agree?
Peter Gallagher 22:31, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
