The EU and the WTO

The WTO advocates increasing global trade and increasingly open markets. This implies the elimination of tariffs and quotas on imports in order to create what might be described as a global free trade zone. To the extent that EU members might view this as a threat to the existence or benefit of EU membership to member nations, it might be suggested that the EU and the WTO are working against each other.

The WTO advocates for global free trade. The EU has an economic agenda, and a social agenda, a human rights agenda, and an environmental agenda. To the extent that the current principles of public international law do not offer guidance on how to deal with conflicts between rules that promote public policy goals, such as enhancing trade vs. protecting the environment, an argument could be made that the EU and WTO are working against each other.

On the other hand, there are similarities between the goals of the EU and the WTO. The WTO's goal is to lower tariffs and non-tariff barriers to increase international trade. In an

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h other legitimate policy objectives. Based on the slowdown in FDI described in Kristen Schweiser's article Losing Its Edge, one recommendation to the Competitiveness Council is that Hungary needs to join the EU as quickly as possible. The openness of a nation's economy has an impact on the amount of FDI it attracts. As an extreme example, North Korea's economy is closed to the world and it attracts essentially no FDI. In contrast, a significant percent of FDI occur between countries bound by regional trade agreements such as those that exist within the European Union. EU member countries tend to have more FDI originating from other EU countries than from other nations because of the ease with which investments can be made and profits repatriated. Another recommendation to the Competitiveness Council is to accelerate the process of simplifying FDI in Hungary. It is one thing to talk about making Hungary a more desirable location for FDI, and another to implement the programs that make this a reality. Hungary has managed to make sweeping changes in the last two decades from a socialist country to a thriving market economy. As often happens, Hungary has gone 90 percent of the way toward developing a free market economy, but sto
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)