*** L'OCDE et la politique commerciale. OCDE (2 rue André-Pascal, F-75775 Paris cedex 16.
Tel: (33-1) 45288167 - Fax: 45241950 - e-mail: sales@oecd.org - Internet: http://www.oecd.org ). "Synthèses" series. 2005, 35 pp.
Published in the run-up to the organisation in Paris on 22 and 23 May this year of the Organisation for Cooperation and Development in Europe (OCDE)'s 2006 Forum, this special edition of "Synthèses" looks at the OCDE's position with regard to trade policy. Five themes are addressed in short seven-page studies. The first, entitled "Comment aider les travailleurs à naviguer sur des marchés du travail mondialisés" (How to help workers find their way around globalised labour markets), echoes recent reflection on this subject, by the 'Organisation sur l'intégration économique internationale', along with the job and salary insecurity it causes for OCDE workers and the best way of responding to this. The author, Paul Swaim, says that a broader perspective is required if one is to understand the challenge for politicians of job losses due to world trade, along with research into structural adjustment in general, technological progress and demographic change, all of which contribute to the phenomenon. For this reasons, solutions going well beyond labour market programmes are required to take up this challenge, although employment and welfare policies still play a decisive role. If job losses as a result of globalisation have generated so much fear, it is because not everything has been done to help workers adapt to the increasingly globalised labour market. In this connection, the author comments that greater use of preventative measures or innovative solutions, including salary-insurance, could lead to both a strong capacity to make adjustment by companies and the labour market, and could maintain employability and the income of a heterogeneous, ageing workforce.
The second article studies how free trade could be better used to the benefit of development, with Raed Safadi focussing on three controversial issues, namely the probable impact of cutting the trade preferences granted to development countries, how changes to tariff barriers will impact on public finance, and the repercussions of liberalising trade in services. The author writes that it is impossible to avoid answering these three questions if one wants negotiations over the Doha Programme to come up with results that actually meet expectations. Ronald Steenblik looks at the opening up of markets in environmental goods and services. He starts by defining environmental goods and services before looking at obstacles to efficient trade and explaining the benefits that free trade in environmental goods and services might bring. The fourth article looks at the costs and benefits of facilitating trade, in other words, measures to be taken under the Doha Round to simplify and facilitate all trade processes. Evdokia Moïsé Leeman uses OCDE studies to demonstrate that developing countries will benefit the most from more efficient trade procedures, although they may find it more difficult to implement them than developed countries. The last article looks at the opening up of the services market, described as a key factor of economic growth. Massimo Geloso Grosso writes that liberalising the services market will be beneficial for all economies, including those of the developing world, as long as it is carried out in a carefully thought-out manner and takes account of the fact that this is a particularly complex issue. He writes that any discussion of trade in services has to take on board the controversial question of whether service suppliers, like nurses, lawyers and IT technicians, can travel to work in other countries. A highly fitting topic for the current period, in Europe as well as the rest of the world!
Pierre Bouvier
*** Revue du Marché commun et de l'Union européenne. Editions techniques et économiques (3 rue Soufflot, F-75005 Paris. Tel: (33-1) 55426130 - Fax: 55426139 - E-mail: editecom@starnet.fr - Internet: http://www.editecom.com ). April 2006, No. 497, 60 pp. Annual subscription: €187 (France), €222 (elsewhere).
A well thought-out article comparing economic patriotism and the 'European ideal' opens the April issue of this ever-interesting review. Prof. Thouvenin (Paris X University) comments that mergers challenged in the name of economic patriotism across Europe because of the country of origin of the bidding company or the families controlling them rather than because they would jeopardise pulbic security, plurality of the media, prudential rules or any kind of legitimate interest. There is no way the European Union can accept this concept, described as a sorry affair of states whose history within living memory clearly teaches that nothing good can be expected of them. Prof. Thouvenin calls on 'those in charge' to become aware in all urgency of the bad turn being taken in , noting that in the East, Slobodan Milosevic's burial has been attended by croweds of Serbs, while countries in the old Europe make a show of turning in on themselves and on the other side of the Atlatnic, the United States reveal its deeply protectionist soul in the face of investment from Dubai. The author says smell of the 1930s lingers in the air.
(MT)
*** KLAUS LIEBSCHER, JOSEF CHRISTL, PETER MOOSLECHNER, DORIS RITZBERGER-GRÜNWALD (Eds.): European Economic Integration and South-East Europe. Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd (Glensanda House, Montpellier Parade, Cheltenham Glos, GL50 1UA, UK. Tel: (44-1242) 226934 - Fax: (44-1242) 262111 - e-mail: info@e-elgar.co.uk - Internet: http://www.e-elgar.com ). 2005, 416 pp, £79-95. ISBN 1-84542-517-0.
Attention has focussed since the last round of EU enlargement on South-East Europe, a region with countries due to join the European Union next year and others whose political and economic situation is such that they can only consider joining the EU in the far, uncertain, future. Publishing the proceedings of the first conference organised by the Bank of Austria on European economic integration in November 2004, this book aims to give an overview of the overall situation in the region and identify challenges in terms of the prospects of joining the rest of the European continent. The question is approached from many angles, like the structural and institutional situation, macroeconomics and immigration, focussing, however, on economic and financial matters. Nobody will surprised to learn that the book's editors are high-ranking officials at the Bank of Austria (which organised the conference). Klaus Liebscher is the bank's governor, Joseph Christl is a member of the Governing Board, Peter Mooslechner is director of economic research and analysis and Doris Ritzberger-Grünwald manages the foreign research section. The essays are written by writers of the ilk of Jean-Claude Trichet, President of the European Central Bank. It is not by accident that the Vienna-based bank decided to look at this part of the world. Austrian bankers have shown themselves to be great entrepreneurs in the ten new EU Member States and are now among the most active entrepreneurs in South-East Europe, accounting for more than 25% of its banking industry. The book casts an expert eye on the region with one of the highest growth rates on the European continent (4% on average) but from a very low starting point and with a huge amount still to be done in areas like economic performance, monetary performance, foreign investment, use of the euro, unemployment and the brain drain.
(FRo)
*** WENHUA SHAN: The Legal Framework of EU-China Investment Relations. A Critical Appraisal. Hart Publishing (Salter's Boatyard, Folly Bridge, Abingdon Rd, Oxford, OX1 4LB, UK. Tel: (44-1865) 245533 - Fax: 794882 - E-mail: mail@hartpub.co.uk - Internet: http//: http://www.hartpub.co.uk ). "China and International Economic Law Series". 2005, 377 pp. ISBN 1-84113-391-4.
There has been a huge increase in EU investment in China since the early 1990s and this is expected to continue the upward trend now the People's Republic of China is joining the World Trade Organisation. A law lectuer in the United Kingdom and China, Wenhua Shan explores and critically but constructively comments on EU investment in China in this book, the continuation of a doctoral these, along with the legal farmeowk. He gives a detailed breakdown of the EU rules on foreign trade, Chinese law (often ineffective and not implemented) an international trading rules, described as 'incomplete, incoherent or either too general or too specialised'. In his in-depth analysis, the author aims to demonstrate that the time has come to introduce a new international legal framework to facilitate investment between the EU and China, made more necessary yet also more feasible by the strengthening of economic links between the two powers.
(LD)
*** NADINE WATTE, CANDICE BARBE: Droit international des affaires. Recueil de textes. De Boeck & Larcier (39 rue des Minimes, B-1000 Brussels. Tel: (32-10) 482500 - Fax: 482519 - E-mail: commande@deboeckservices.com - Internet: http: //http://www.deboeck.com ). 2005, 840 pp, €88. ISBN 2-8044-1899-5.
International business law is mushrooming at the same pace as globalisation and the explosion of the internet, hence the utility of this collection of the unabridged version of a huge number of international business laws along, to a lesser extent, with international inheritance and family laws (alimony, wills and testaments, etc). The first part looks at relevant sources of Belgian law, the second at EU sources (directives and regulations). EU regulations are listed according to whether they include rules of substantive law or conflicts between jurisdictions and international cooperation, since regulations these days tend to cover many international disputes, not only in terms of competence and recognition of rulings issued in other countries, but also in terms of obtaining proof and the significance (and notification) of the rules in other countries. The last two parts of the book cover international conventions signed by Belgium and non-state rules, respectively.
(PBo)
*** SANDRINE MALJEAN-DUBOIS (Ed.): La société internationale et les enjeux bioéthiques. Editions A. Pedone (13 rue Soufflot, F-75005 Paris. Tel: (33-1) 43540597 - Fax: 46340760). "Rencontres internationales d'Aix-en-Provence" series, No. 13. 2005, 238 pp, €25. ISBN 2-233-00484-1.
This book is a follow-up to the twenty-third international conference in Aix-en-Provence on the latest advances in biotech (genetic engineering, GMOs, cloning, patenting life, etc) which create as much enthusiasm in some parties as horror in others. Like all novelties of the type, there are efforts to work out how they fit into to the values of society. As this book points out, however, it is not easy to establish a legal framework for biotech at EU level, and things are even tougher at international level given the wide variety of conflicting approaches to bioethics. This book therefore studies changes in bioethics at international level, taking a multi-disciplinary approach and focussing on the morality and ethics of the impact of life sciences on society, explains researcher Sandrine Maljean-Dubois. The authors explain how bioethics ended up crystallising in a new form of law, constantly changing (what was once illegal can become acceptable over time), adapting to the poor content and the relative nature of the established rules. They explain, for example, how bioethics is anchored in human rights, and highlight the European Union and Council of Europe's contributions in this field. The book provides in-depth consideration of the views taken on bioethics round the world, on tension between desire for uniform rights and concern to preserve national and cultural diversity, and between how universal issues (the human race) intermesh with the particular (individuals).
(FRo)
*** JEAN A. P. CLEMENT (Ed.) Postconflict Economics in Sub-Saharan Africa. Lessons from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. International Monetary Fund (External Relations Department, Publication Services, Washington, D.C. 20431. Tel: (1-202) 6237430 - Fax: 6237201 - E-mail: publications@imf.org - Internet: http: //http://www.imf.org ). 2004, 327 pp, $28. ISBN 1-58906-252-3.
People are not always aware that wars in the Great Lakes region of Africa, particularly in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo (which has a surface area equivalent to that of the whole of Western Europe), are some of the bloodiest since the Second World War and have directly and indirectly affected the lives of almost 100 million people. In recent years, the authorities of the DRC have made serious efforts to try and get the country out of this cycle of conflict. The economic aspect is crucial here. Jean Clément, sub-director of the African section of the International Monetary Fund, sheds useful light on the importance of the economy both in terms of sparking off war and in terms of conflict resolution. The book covers all sub-Saharan Africa, but focusses on the DRC, carefully studying and commenting in detail upon each stage of external intervention and the action of external political decision-makers (the IMF, the World Bank, UNICEF's action to help child soldiers, etc). The authors provide a detailed picture of the economic situation, shedding light on the social and political situation in the process. There is also a section focussing on the tricky question of disarming, demobilising and repatriating members of the various armed forces.
(FRo)