Dipartimento di Giurisprudenza

The EU is currently negotiating a controversial transatlantic free trade agreement with the United States towards a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) or Transatlantic Free Trade Area. The main features of such an agreement would be the abolition of tariffs, the reduction of non-tariff barriers to trade between the EU and the US and the introduction of a dispute settlement mechanism. This could boost the EU economy by €120 billion and the United States economy by €90 billion. Moreover, such an agreement could lead to a framework of transatlantic economic cooperation and even integration, a "Transatlantic Community of Law" (Fahey 2014), in addition to the long established cooperation in defense and security through NATO. Apart from the economic and political dimensions of this major innovation in transatlantic relations, this free trade agreement will lead to the evolution of an entirely new field of law, closely related to and developed from EU law and international trade law. The study of this new field of law cannot be limited to those aspects already addressed in the TTIP but must include all fields of trade and competition law currently regulated in the TFEU, the relevant decision-making mechanisms, the relationship between the relevant legal systems, and dispute settlement. The emergence of 'Transatlantic trade law' in its historical, political, and economic context will lead to numerous questions, general, specific, and contextual which will have to be addressed in larger research projects. The emergence of a new free trade area will require a new type of specialist legal researcher, versed in the foundations and challenges of a developing transatlantic economic and legal community. This new type of researcher needs to work in concert with the relevant think tanks, law firms, regulatory bodies, NGOs, industries and commerce.