Panel Discussion: Europe 1992

Transcript of a panel on Europe in 1992

Insuring Your Donation An Experiment

An increasing fraction of donations is channeled through donation intermediaries. These enti-ties serve multiple purposes, one of which seems to be providing donors with greater certainty: that the donation reaches its intended goal, and that the donor may be sure to get a tax ben-efit. We interpret this function as insurance and test the option to insure donations in the lab. Our participants indeed have a positive willingness to pay for insurance against either risk. Yet the insurance option is only critical for their willingness to donate to a charity if the un-certainty affects the proper use of their donation

Scope/need for strengthening WTO rules, especially regarding, dispute settlement,institutional issues and functioning of the system in a globalising world

Introduction: Twenty years ago, while I was writing my doctoral thesis on voluntary export restraints and Article XX GATT, I applied for an internship with the GATT Secretariat. At that time the GATT Secretariat was a body with few lawyers and many economists. Law did not matter that much; indeed it was difficult for a young lawyer to get accepted as a “stagiare”. I insisted and eventually was accepted. Two years later, while studying with John Jackson I learned about the difference between power and rule-oriented diplomacy. GATT’s reliance on diplomacy did function reasonably well, even without a legal mechanism, yet there were spectacular cases of non-compliance and the system was always prone to “blackmail”. Compared to GATT, the WTO has come a long way. Nobody would have imagined at the start of the Uruguay Round that the result of the negotiations would be a World Trade Organisation with a binding dispute settlement mechanism. We went from a power-oriented to a rule-oriented system, which until now dealt reasonably well with more than 270 dispute settlement cases. Still, there are challenges to the system of which I would like to address four: Rulemaking versus Jurisprudence; Dispute Settlement; Avoidance Implementation; Dispute Settlement Refor

Border Tax Adjustment to Combat Carbon Leakage: A Myth

Discussions about unilateral trade measures as a means to combat climate change have become quite fashionable notwithstanding warnings against unilateralism and protectionism from the leaders of G-8 and G-20 in times of an economic crisis. A system of ‘border tax adjustment’ on imports is suggested in order to countervail the cost of domestic emission trading systems. The proponents argue that without such measures, a country having adopted an emission trading system would not only lose economically but also environmentally. The standard reason given to justify this argument is the notion of carbon leakage, namely, the danger that energy-intensive production would move from countries with domestic policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions based on a carbon price for emitters to regions that do not have a binding and costly regulatory CO2 regime. Recently, the discussions have been fuelled by the Waxman/Markey Bill, adopted on 26 June 2009 by the House of Representatives and by a French non-paper, presented at the informal EU Environment Council held in July 2009. These two initiatives aim to establish, in the context of a domestic emission trading system, a system of ‘border tax adjustment’ against some imports from some countries, namely, those that are seen as not contributing enough in the fight against climate change. The revised European ETS Directive does not provide for border measures. It instructs the European Commission to submit a report to the Council and the European Parliament no later than 30 June 2010 assessing whether energy-intensive sectors are exposed to a significant risk of carbon leakage and explicitly outlines the inclusion of imports in the European Union’s ETS system as one of several actions. The joint WTO-UNEP paper on trade and climate change has been widely regarded as a justification from a legal point of view of such measures. While there are many proponents for such measures, there remains a considerable amount of skepticism; politicians, business organizations, and scholars have warned against such an approach. The following short note will discuss the feasibility of ‘border tax adjustment’ in relation to domestic climate change legislation as well as some WTO legal aspects along the following questions: (1) Are there target countries for border measures? (2) Would border measures help to combat climate change and could they be administered without too much bureaucracy? (3) How should border measures be qualified under General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)?</jats:p