Economic Integration Law Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 6500 words

Economic Integration Law - Essay Example They represent free trade area while resulting in trade creation by shifting the production of some items from less efficient member countries to more efficient member countries. Regional economic integration encourages countries in a geographic region to reduce or remove tariff and non-tariff barriers which allow free flow of goods and services among them. At the end, the system promotes global business (OPPapers.com, 2011). In recent years, international trade has been witnessed an emergence of two parallel trends, the first one is the rise of regionalism, and the second one is legalism in the enforcement trade agreements. In case of regionalism, there is a host of new integration initiatives drawn along the geographical lines. The two trends have succeeded to garner scholarly attention and spark comparative analysis of regional versus multilateral arrangements. And, at the same time they lead debate regarding the political dynamics of judicialisation within individual facts. Trade facts at regional level exhibits considerable variation in governance structures which are an interesting factor. Moreover, a question of institutional design has proven contentious in recent trade negotiations which underscore their political salience. The creation of supranational institutions in regional trade agreements have direct implications for the academic debates in related to globalisation, sovereignty, and interdependence (Smith, J. 2003). Post Second World War witnessed a prominence of multilateralism and regionalism as more and more countries joined the process of economic integration. We can see the trend during the period 1940-1990. In the process of economic integration, countries those who have entered into the free trade area have introduced several measures for the easy flow of goods and services between the member countries. As a result role played by tariffs in international trade has been declined. Generally countries used trade barriers such as customs, quot as, taxes, duties, anti dumping measures, health, environmental, and safety certification requirements, countervailing duties, constitutional laws, and licenses for the restriction of trade. But, when countries entered into the economic integration, these restrictions have been liberalised for the facilitation of free trade movement. Agreements at regional level which are known as Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) generally restricted to a particular geographical location and are becoming a defining feature of the modern economy. These are the free trade agreements among the countries of a particular geographical location. Following the success of European Union, which shows that RTAs can build prosperity and peace, countries in other geographical region came closer to form the similar agreements at the regional level. As a result more than 300 regional trading arrangements were registered under World Trade Organisation, and majority of the countries belonging to European Union, Amer ica, Austria, Africa, and Asian continent joined regional grouping of one sort or the other. Compare to other regions, countries of the Asian continent were the recent entrants for this field, but they rapidly catching up the race. On the other hand, RTAs in African continent