Download Briefing Paper 46 Briefing Paper 46 – July 2020 Minako Morita-Jaeger [1] Key Points Introduction Two underlying challenges Little can be expected from market liberalisation Rule-making is the key area of “ambition” Area of ambition 1: Enhancing investment Area of ambition 2: Promoting e-commerce and digital trade What to do with unfinished business? Conclusion Key points There are two significant challenges underlying the Japan-UK FTA negotiation: the EU-UK FTA and the timeframe Better market access than the EU-Japan EPA provides cannot be expected from this negotiation except for some outstanding issues. This is not only because of the extraordinarily short negotiating timeframe, but because of other multi-layered reasons. The UK is already enjoying a high degree of market liberalisation in the EU-Japan EPA. Also, the UK’s bargaining power is limited due to its market size relative to Japan’s. What is more, MFN provisions in the EU-Japan EPA prevent Japan from conceding higher levels of liberalisation to the UK than to the EU both in goods and services. Accordingly, rule-making will play a pivotal role if the parties are to achieve a “EU-Japan EPA-plus” agreement. Given the unprecedentedly short negotiating timeframe, the scope of “ambition” has to be [...]

Download Briefing Paper 31 Briefing Paper 31 – June 2019 Authors: Julia Magntorn Garrett, Minako Morita-Jaeger and L. Alan Winters Key points Introduction An Evaluation of KOREU and KORUS GATS-PLUS achievements Comparing the extent of liberalisation by sector Comparing the degree of liberalisation by mode of supply Comparing regulatory cooperation Possible options for the UK and reality checks Conclusion Footnotes Online Appendix Key Points In the early months of 2019, the UK Government’s efforts to roll-over the EU’s existing Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) were focused on the narrow issue of preparing for a ‘no-deal’ Brexit. But if the UK manages an orderly Brexit and has a transition period until the end of 2020, there would be time to do more than just rolling over these agreements. In the case of a future UK-Korea deal, the UK could potentially negotiate a new FTA built on the Korea-EU FTA (KorEU) or negotiate a completely new FTA modeled loosely on the Korea-US FTA (KORUS). Our comparative analysis of KorEU and KORUS reveals that the two FTAs took very different approaches to services trade liberalisation. While both achieved greater market access than Korea had committedin the GATS, KORUS seems to have achieved [...]

Download Briefing Paper 24 Briefing Paper 24 – November 2018 Minako Morita-Jaeger and L. Alan Winters Key points Introduction Understanding what services trade liberalisation under FTAs can offer Why are FTA services negotiations so difficult? Legal and economic factors affecting FTA services negotiations The UK’s future FTA services negotiations with non-EU countries It is unrealistic for the UK to expect better deals than those of the EU Conclusion References Footnotes Key points Services trade liberalisation commitments in the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and existing Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) do not go very far, because governments prefer to retain their ‘policy space’, which provides flexibility for changing regulations anytime they want. Services trade negotiations are different from goods trade negotiations because services trade barriers are all about regulations, and these are much more complex than tariffs to negotiate. While FTAs can narrow the ‘policy space’ between the GATS commitments and actual applied policy, they very rarely eliminate it. FTAs in services can provide a greater level of legal certainty to business activities than the GATS can provide. But even achieving this will be a challenge for the UK because it will have such limited bargaining power in [...]