Document Type
Article
Publication Date
10-8-2009
Abstract
This paper examines the consistency of the EU Renewable Energy Directive with the European Communities’ (‘EC’) obligations under the World Trade Organization (‘WTO’) Agreements. It focuses on the obligations under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 1994 (‘GATT’) and the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (‘TBT Agreement’). The purpose of the paper is to summarise the current state of the law on issues relevant to the EU Renewable Energy Directive and to apply that law to assess the consistency of the Directive with the EC’s WTO obligations. The focus is on the words of the agreements themselves and the previous case law, rather than on general policy arguments that have been repeated constantly in the literature. This paper reaches two conclusions. First, the EU Renewable Energy Directive is likely to be prima facie inconsistent with the EC’s obligations under the GATT. Secondly, it is unlikely to fall within the scope of the TBT Agreement, but if it does, it is likely to be inconsistent with the EC’s obligations under that agreement.
Scholarly Commons Citation
Mitchell, Andrew D. and Tran, Christopher, "The Consistency of the EU Renewable Energy Directive with the WTO Agreements" (2009). Georgetown Law Faculty Working Papers. 119.
https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/fwps_papers/119