Trans-Pacific partnership and regional comprehensive economic partnership as a model international legal structure for economic integration in the Asia-Pacific

Abstract

The article explores international law aspects of the contemporary integration processes in the Asia-Pacific with a specific focus on such relatively new formations
as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). Based on the WTO law provisions with regard to the free trade areas for goods and services, both Partnerships significantly widen the scope of regulated inter-governmental relationships, which allows considering the TPP and the RCEP as a fundamentally new form of the regional trade agreements. Having a fixed number of participating states and a system of institution with their functions and competencies, the Partnerships do not represent inter-governmental organizations and are vested with no legal capacity or, especially, supranational powers. However, this does not undermine the trade and economic significance of the Partnerships while also making them an attractive model of the soft integration structure between the states having different level of economic development, located in different geographical regions and bound with their own integration obligations under bi- and multilateral (subregional) trade agreements. The founding agreements of the Partnerships are typical “WTO plus” arrangements combining the provisions on liberalization of trade in goods and services with the parties’ mutual obligations in the fields of investments, sustainable development, competition, administrative and legal cooperation. At the same time, applicability of parallel bi- and multilateral trade agreements between the Asia-Pacific states, including those within ASEAN, forms a complex multilayer regulation of foreign trade and entails a risk of legal uncertainty for economic operators.