IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jcmkts/v43y2005i2p311-325.html

The EU Offer of Service Trade Liberalization in the Doha Round: Evidence of a Not‐Yet‐Perfect Customs Union

Author

Listed:
  • ROLF J. LANGHAMMER

Abstract

While the EU is a customs union in merchandise trade (goods), it has not yet reached this stage of integration in service trade. Trade policies between individual Member States and non‐Member States vary in services. Given the remaining national sovereignties in regulating service trade against other EU Member States also, the EU is not yet even a free trade area. How far the EU is from a customs union in service trade is very difficult to assess because of the non‐quantitative nature of trade restrictions in this sector. This article gives a first hint of the distance from a customs union by calculating frequency indices of trade measures by refining the 1995 Hoekman index. The database is the EU's first offer in service trade in the WTO Doha round in February 2003. It emerges that the deviation from a customs union is not substantial, but still exists because of differences in national policies against non‐Member States which are particularly relevant in the mode of supply via labour flows. Inter alia, policy measures comprise economic needs tests, residence and nationality criteria. The article concludes that there is reason to assume that, in the course of the Doha round negotiations, some if not most of the national measures will be given up. Therefore, multilateral trade negotiations will be instrumental in bringing the EU to a complete customs union as happened in goods trade between 1958 and 1968 when the Dillon and Kennedy rounds helped to complete the customs union in industrial goods.

Suggested Citation

  • Rolf J. Langhammer, 2005. "The EU Offer of Service Trade Liberalization in the Doha Round: Evidence of a Not‐Yet‐Perfect Customs Union," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(2), pages 311-325, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jcmkts:v:43:y:2005:i:2:p:311-325
    DOI: 10.1111/j.0021-9886.2005.00557.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0021-9886.2005.00557.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.0021-9886.2005.00557.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Isabelle Rabaud & Thierry Montalieu, 2006. "Trade in Services : how does it Work for MENA Countries?," Post-Print halshs-00204977, HAL.
    2. Joseph Francois & Bernard Hoekman, 2010. "Services Trade and Policy," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(3), pages 642-692, September.
    3. Eschenbach, Felix & Hoekman, Bernard, 2006. "Services policies in transition economies : on the European Union and the World Trade Organization as commitment mechanisms," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3951, The World Bank.
    4. Nadine Behncke, 2013. "Assessing the impact of European Integration on sectoral trade in services," FIW Working Paper series 109, FIW.
    5. Carolina Lennon, 2008. "Trade in services: Cross-border trade vs commercial presence. Evidence of complementarity," PSE Working Papers halshs-00586217, HAL.
    6. Rolf J. Langhammer, 2010. "Unordnung in der internationalen Handelsordnung: Befunde, Gründe, Auswirkungen und Therapien," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 11(1), pages 75-98, February.
    7. Christen, Elisabeth & Francois, Joseph & Hoekman, Bernard, 2013. "Computable General Equilibrium Modeling of Market Access in Services," Handbook of Computable General Equilibrium Modeling, in: Peter B. Dixon & Dale Jorgenson (ed.), Handbook of Computable General Equilibrium Modeling, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 1601-1643, Elsevier.
    8. Giuseppe Bertola & Lorenza Mola, 2010. "Services Provision and Temporary Mobility: Freedoms and Regulation in the EU," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(4), pages 633-653, April.
    9. Bernard Hoekman & Aaditya Mattoo & André Sapir, 2007. "The political economy of services trade liberalization: a case for international regulatory cooperation?," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 23(3), pages 367-391, Autumn.
    10. Elisabeth M. Christen & Joseph Francois & Bernard Hoekman, 2012. "CGE Modeling of Market Access in Services," Economics working papers 2012-08, Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.
    11. Eschenbach, Felix & Hoekman, Bernard, 2006. "Services policies in transition economies: on the EU and WTO as commitment mechanisms," World Trade Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 5(3), pages 415-443, November.
    12. Bernard Hoekman & Çağlar Özden, 2010. "The Euro–Mediterranean Partnership: Trade in Services as an Alternative to Migration?," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(4), pages 835-857, September.
    13. Bianka Dettmer, 2012. "The European Union's service directive: Contrasting ex ante estimates with empirical evidence," Jena Economics Research Papers 2012-019, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.
    14. Langhammer, Rolf J., 2005. "Jeder macht was er will, keiner macht was er soll: zur permissiven Haltung der Welthandelsordnung gegenüber regionalen Integrationsabkommen und deren Kosten," Open Access Publications from Kiel Institute for the World Economy 3784, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    15. Bianka Dettmer, 2012. "Business services outsourcing and economic growth: Evidence from a dynamic panel data approach," Jena Economics Research Papers 2012-049, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.
    16. Langhammer, Rolf J., 2008. "Why a market place must not discriminate: The case against a US-EU free trade agreement," Kiel Working Papers 1407, Kiel Institute for the World Economy.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jcmkts:v:43:y:2005:i:2:p:311-325. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0021-9886 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.