The Editors: Professor Paul Demaret is Director of the Institute of European Legal Studies at the University of Liège as well as Director of Legal Studies at the College of Europe in Bruges.
Jean-François Bellis is Maître de Conférences at the University of Liège and Partner in the Brussels Law firm Van Bael & Bellis.
Gonzalo García Jiménez is Research Fellow at the University of Liège.

Contents: P. Demaret/J.F. Bellis: Introduction - René Schwok/Christophe Bonte: EEA and Switzerland - EU Bilateral Agreements in Comparative Perspective: What Lessons? - Jonas W. Myhre: Comments - Marc Maresceau: The European Union and Central and Eastern Europe - Stanislaw Soltysinski: The Proliferation of the European Union Rules on Free Trade in Central and Eastern Europe: Towards a Pan-European Integrated Market - Péter Balázs: Subregional Cooperation in Central and Eastern Europe, The Visegrád Declaration and the Central European Free Trade Agreement - Alfred Tovias: The EU and Mediterranean Countries - Halûk A. Kabaalioglu: The Turkish Model of Association: Customs Union before Accession - Félix Peña: Some Lessons from the Mercosur Initial Experience - Alan Fairlie Reinoso: The Andean Community Case - Jacques Pelkmans: ASEAN and APEC: A Triumph of the "Asian Way"? - Donald R. Mackay: The North American Free Trade Agreement: Its Possible Extension to South American Countries - Sergio López-Ayllón: Comments - Gonzalo García Jiménez: The New Commercial Strategy of the European Union towards Latin America: In Search of Market Access through a Regional and Specific Approach - Richard H. Steinberg: Transatlanticism in Support of Multilateralism? Prospects for Great Power Management of the World Trading System - David Palmeter: Rules of Origin in Regional Trade Agreements - Edurne Navarro Varona: Comments - Jean-François Bellis: The Treatment of Dumping, Subsidies and Anti-Competitive Practices in Regional Trade Agreements - Petros C. Mavroidis: Comments - Pierre Delsaux: Government Procurement in a Multilateral Context - Nicolas Michel: Comments - Pierre Sauvé: Regional versus Multilateral Approaches to Services and Investment Liberalization: Anything to Worry About? - Karl Falkenberg: Comments - Inge Govaere: Convergence, Divergence and Interaction of Regional Trade Agreements and the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) - Hanns Ullrich: Comments - Anne Trebilcock: Social Dimensions of International Trade Liberalization - José Angel Canela-Cacho: "The Social Dimensions of the Liberalization of World Trade" and "Trade and Labour Standards: Can Common Rules be Agreed?" . The View from the ILO - A Commentary and a Rejoinder - Daniel C. Esty/Damien Geradin: Environmental Protection in Regional Trade Agreements: The European Community and NAFTA - Wybe Th. Douma/Mark Jacobs: Towards an Equitable Relation between Trade and Environment: The EC, NAFTA and WTO Compared - Giorgio Sacerdoti: Standards of Treatment, Harmonization and Mutual Recognition: A Comparison between Regional Areas and the Global Trading System - Gonzalo García Jiménez/Miguel Gardeñes Santiago: Technical Standards in a Context of Regional Integration Agreements - Pierre Pescatore: The New WTO Dispute Settlement Mechanism - Celso Lafer: Comments - Inge Govaere: The Reception of the WTO Agreement in the European Union: The Legacy of GATT - Richard H. Steinberg: Direct Application of Multilateral Trade Agreements in the United States - Serge Devos: The Mulilateral Rules and the New Dimension of Regional Integration: Weaknesses, Need and Scope for more Disciplines - William J. Davey: Comments - Theofanis Christoforou: Multilateral Rules as a Constraint on Regional Rules: A Regional Perspective - Erwan Lannon: The Compatibility of the Euro-Mediterranean Regional Integration with the Multilateral Rules - Paul Demaret: The Reciprocal Influence of Multilateral and Regional Trade Rules: A Framework of Analysis - Christoph Bail: Comments.

The completion of the Uruguay Round of Multilateral Trade Negotiations coincided with the development of a worldwide trend towards increased regionalism, as witnessed by the conclusion of NAFTA, the emerging process of regional integration in Latin America and the launching of APEC. While this new trend has caused some observers to evoke the prospect of a world economy increasingly divided among rival "trade blocs", recent studies by the OECD and the WTO suggest that regional trade agreements may complement rather than threaten the multilateral trade system.
This book reproduces the proceedings of a conference on Regional Trade Agreements and Multilateral Rules after the Uruguay Round organized by the University of Liège Faculty of Law. The reports cover the following issues: - comparative analysis of the major regional trade agreements in Europe (excluding the EC domestic market system), the Americas and the Asia Pacific area; - the emerging new form of regionalism, inter-regionalism, the most spectacular example of which could be the Transatlantic Free Trade Area (TAFTA) currently under consideration; - comparative analysis of the treatment of selected issues under the major regional trade arrangements in the world and their relationship with the existing or emerging multilateral rules: rules of origin; dumping, subsidies and anticompetitive practices; intellectual property rights; social protection and social clause; environmental standards; national treatment; mutual recognition and legislative harmonization; dispute settlement mechanisms; - analysis of the extent to which multilateral rules act as a constraint on regional trade arrangements and the reciprocal influence between regional and multilateral trade rules.