Ec And The Gatt / Wto Legal Relationship Between A Number Of Issues To Study

Mostly from the angle of the European Community (hereinafter the EC), this dissertation takes the two types of co-existence free trade arrangements in the world—multilateral trading system and regional economic integration—as the research background, probes into the practice of the EC in the GATT/WTO and the legal relationships between them. The author holds that, as a "super-national" regional international organization, the EC is an active participator in the multilateral trading system. As a member of the WTO, the European Communities enjoy corresponding rights while they need to carry out the obligations faithfully. The dissertation selects several typical issues to probe the legal relationships between the two organizations. On this base, the dissertation summarizes the influences of the regional economic integration groups (including the EC) bring to the multilateral trading system and briefly analyses several issues of china's participation in the WTO. Except the foreword and the conclusion, the dissertation has five chapters; the main contents are as follows:In the foreword, the author introduces the motivation, the purpose, the object, the methods, the train of the thought and the outline of the dissertation.The first chapter reviews the developing course of the regional economic integration in the GATT/WTO system; the European Communities are serving as examples. It includes three sections. The first section introduces the developing course of European integration from two points of views: theory and practice. After reviewing the history of the worldwide regional economic integration, the second section emphasizes the specific rules about the regional economic integration in the GATT/WTO system. The third section discusses the supervision of the GATT/WTO on the European Communities from two aspects: one is that GATT/WTO review mechanism regarding regional trading blocs reviews some treaties and agreements of the EC, the GATT/WTO keeps tacit on the development and enlargement of the EC in general; the other is that the WTO trade policy review mechanism reviews all aspects of the trade policies of the EC periodically.The second chapter investigates the international legal personalities of the European Communities and their legal status in the GATT/WTO. It includes two sections. In the first section, the author holds that, as super-national regional organizations, the European Communities have the legal personalities and have the behavior competences to take part in international affairs. The second chapter discusses the European Communities' legal status in GATT/WTO. In the GATT system, the EC participated in almost all activities and replaced its member countries as the de facto participants step by step. But the member countries of the EC would not like to abandon the powers and act as the contracting parties in legal forms in the GATT. In the WTO system, the European Communities become formal members together with the member states.The third chapter analyses the implementation of GATT/WTO rules in the EC. It includes four sections. The first section introduces the general theory of the treaty implementation in the domestic countries and the practices of the main countries. Although the EC is a regional international organization, the author holds that the general theory of the treaty implementation in domestic countries also applies to the EC. The analyses of the second section make it clear that international treaties are one of the forms of legal sources in the EC. The European court of justice (hereinafter the ECJ) developed the principle of direct effect and the principle of priority in its judicial practices to ensure the implementation of the law of the EC in the member states. The third section briefly analyzes the main legal problems of the "mixed agreements" in the EC, for the WTO agreements are the mixed agreements concluded by the EC and its member states. The fourth section probes into some issues of the enforcement of GATT/WTO rules in the EC. With regard to GATT rules,...