Digital Trade in the EU–New Zealand Free Trade Agreement: An Appraisal

Abstract

The increasing reliance on digital technologies for cross-border economic activity has sparked the quest for adequate rules. Preferential trade agreements have become the primary platform for digital trade rulemaking and the recently signed Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between the European Union (EU) and New Zealand is one of the latest additions to these far-reaching regulatory efforts. The EU– NZ FTA is a particularly instructive case study, as it brings together two important legal entrepreneurs in the area of digital trade law that, however, have different positions in the regulatory landscape and different domestic priorities. The article seeks to reveal the points of convergence and divergence between the two parties and also shows how these could be reconciled with the concluded EU–NZ deal. In the latter context, the article evaluates the normative value and the potential impact of the agreement as well as situates it in the broader and geopolitically complex landscape of digital trade rulemaking. digital trade, data flows, data protection, electronic commerce, free trade agreements, European Union, New Zealand