European Union Trade Research Articles

The legendairy case of the HALLOUMI trade mark: a successful appeal in the opposition to the BBQLOUMI trade mark

Foundation for the Protection of the Traditional Cheese of Cyprus named Halloumi v EUIPO, Court of Justice of the European Union, Case C-766/18 P, 5 March 2020 The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has set aside a decision of the General Court which dismissed an opposition brought by the Cypriot proprietors of the collective European Union trade mark for HALLOUMI against a Bulgarian company’s application to register a figurative mark for BBQLOUMI. The CJEU has referred the case back to the General Court to rule on the likelihood of confusion. The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) held that (i) the earlier collective mark for HALLOUMI could preclude the sign BBQLOUMI from being registered as a European Union trade mark (EUTM), (ii) the same principles and case law for assessing the likelihood of confusion apply regardless of whether the earlier mark is a collective mark or an individual EUTM and (iii) the likelihood of confusion must be assessed globally, taking into account all relevant factors, as held in its consistent case law. In referring the case back to the General Court to rule upon the likelihood of confusion issue, the CJEU also confirmed that the requirement of distinctiveness applies equally to collective marks and individual marks, regardless of whether the collective mark indicates the geographical origin of the goods or services.

The Right to Oppose Further Commercialisation of Goods According to Art. 15(2) of the European Union Trade Mark Regulation ‒ A Balance of Interests?

Abstract This article addresses the balance between free competition and protecting the trade mark proprietor’s interests in the context of selective distribution systems for luxury goods and the right to oppose further commercialisation. Within this framework, the author suggests a flexible system concerning the legitimate reasons for such an opposition, especially regarding luxury goods in the consumer product sector. In particular, the author looks at whether distributors of parallel imported goods – often referred to as ‘grey market traders’ – should take into consideration the limitations and conditions for the distribution of goods in the European Economic Area that are imposed on contractually bound distributors by luxury brand owners, depending on the applied distribution method, the advertising and the quality of goods. The idea of an entitlement of the brand owner to oppose matters of further commercialisation of exhausted goods if the reseller does not comply with obligations which the trade mark proprietor imposes on members of his own selective distribution system regarding specific modalities of sale is also discussed.

A comparative analysis of EU and US trade policies towards least developed countries and the African Growth and Opportunity Act beneficiaries

AbstractMotivationThe European Union (EU) and the US have specific trade preference programmes in place directed towards developing countries in general and, primarily in the case of the EU, towards least developed countries (LDCs) in particular. This article examines the relative merits of these programmes.PurposeThe article compares the trade policies of the EU and the US with respect to LDCs and the countries eligible for the US African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) and examines the relative success of the two donors’ trade policies vis‐à‐vis these two groups of beneficiaries in terms of increasing imports from them.Approach and methodsEconometric evidence from a gravity model is used to compare the effects of EU and US preferential trade policy on imports from the beneficiary countries. First, regressions are carried out using total EU and US imports as dependent variables and, second, EU and US duty‐free imports are used.FindingsThe descriptive part of the article shows that (a) a larger share of EU imports benefits from duty‐free MFN tariffs; (b) the EU offers preferences on all imports from the LDCs (except arms and ammunition), while the US extends preferences to three quarters of all imports; (c) EU preferences are better utilized; and (d) the EU imports more goods duty free. The econometric analysis shows that EU trade policy towards the LDCs and the AGOA beneficiaries has generated approximately twice as much in imports as US policy, when imports of mineral fuels are excluded from the analysis.Policy implicationsEU trade policy is found to outperform US trade policy in terms of generating imports from the LDCs and the AGOA beneficiaries. Hence, if any trade policy ought to be copied by other countries, as suggested by some observers, it should be EU trade policy rather than US trade policy.

Looking for European solutions. Trade unions in Central and Eastern Europe striving for cross-border solidarity

This article deals with the dilemmas faced by trade unions from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) in the context of their relations with western European (EU-15) unions and the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC). The issue of cross-border solidarity is re-examined, taking into account its historical meanings as well as current developments under the pressures of globalisation and EU integration. The article analyses key factors affecting East–West trade union relations – different views within the ETUC, discontinuities in European social dialogue, challenges faced by European works councils and the uncertain future of transnational company agreements. Major dilemmas CEE unions cope with vis-à-vis their western counterparts are outlined. The question of how to achieve a common interest platform for trade unions from Central and Eastern Europe and from western Europe is raised, followed by a suggestion that ‘downward convergence’ in industrial relations is bringing the two regions closer.

European trade union cooperation, union density and employee attitudes to unions

European trade unions have much to gain from cooperating with each other. Such cooperation does exist, but it is still fairly limited and many obstacles need to be overcome if cooperation is to be improved. According to our survey data, higher-level union officials regard differences concerning financial resources and national labour market regulations to be particularly substantial barriers to cooperation. The enormously varying union density across Europe, and its general decrease, also creates barriers. Therefore, employee attitudes to unions are examined using data from the International Social Survey Programme. As expected, union members tend to be more positive about trade unions than non-members. The most interesting finding, however, is that employees in some countries with low union density exhibit fairly positive views or at least views that are not less positive than what we find among employees in many countries with higher density rates. This suggests that there is potential for recruiting members.

Business cycles synchronization among Argentina, Brazil and their main EU trading partners

In this paper, we apply the Hodrick and Prescott filter to explore whether the economic fluctuations of Argentina, Brazil and their main European Union (EU) trading partners followed a similar pattern for the period 1995.1–2018.4. When both South American economies are analyzed together, the highest coincidence is observed in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) fluctuations (almost 75% of the observations lie on the same side of the zero line). However, as to the rest of GDP components, a drop is observed in the coincidences (the observations are close to 50%). While Argentinian GDP, private consumption and imports have a significant correlation with their Brazilian counterparts, this association is rather modest. As to their main EU partners, trade integration is likely to lead to a higher business cycles synchronization for Argentina, but it is not for Brazil.

Good governance practices in Ghana’s FLEGT voluntary partnership agreement process: an application of Q methodology

ABSTRACT The aim of the European Union Forest Law Enforcement, Governance, and Trade Action Plan and its Voluntary Partnership Agreements (VPAs) is to tackle illegal logging and trade in illegal timber, improve forest governance, and foster economic growth in the forest sector. This study employs a Q methodology to assess areas of consensus and disagreement among forest sector stakeholders in Ghana on good forest governance practices as applied to the VPA process. The consensus among these stakeholders is that the VPA process has improved the participation of civil society in decision making and the establishment of a robust verification system to promote transparency and accountability, which are critical for sustainable forest management. However, while the shared perspectives among stakeholders highlight the crucial role of the VPAs in promoting improved forest governance in Ghana, there are still areas of disagreement or tension regarding the issue of accountability, tree tenure rights, and the participation of local communities in the VPA process. The paper concludes by considering the practical implications of the findings for effective forest governance practices in developing countries.

ASEAN and the EU: an assessment of interregional trade potentials

Though negotiations on an Association of Southeast Asian Nations – European Union (ASEAN-EU) trade agreement began in 2007, the region-wide agreement stalled, and the EU has since pursued bilateral agreements with individual ASEAN member states (AMS). Nevertheless, the goal to form an interregional agreement remains as the European Commission and the AMS are currently undertaking a stocktaking exercise to explore the prospects towards the resumption of region-to-region negotiations. In this paper, a stochastic frontier specification of the gravity model is employed to identify and compare the performance (efficiency) of exports relative to the maximum export levels for the ASEAN-EU partnership. The findings, based on a panel dataset of two-way bilateral exports between the ASEAN-10 and the EU-28 over the 2000–2016 period, indicate a low-level of export efficiency. The low efficiency scores of below 0.2 suggest a high degree of trade resistances in the ASEAN-EU partnership. The low interregional trade potentials relate to market access issues, which in turn depend on the trade policy of both regions.

The European Trade Union Confederation

The European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) represents some 45 million trade union members from eighty-nine national trade union confederations and ten European Industry Federations from thirty-nine countries. In 2019, ETUC entered its forty-sixth year and marked its fourteenth quadrennial Congress in Vienna where delegates intervened to shape the work plan and direction of the organisation for the coming four years and to elect a new Executive Committee. This article takes stock of ETUC’s background and primary activities and considers whether ETUC enhances the power and influence of its members, despite the challenging environment in which trade unions in Europe reside in the 21st century. In so doing, the article assesses the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats facing the organisation, which remains the largest civil society organisation in Europe.

Trade unions in CEE and SEE

This article focuses on trade unions as important stakeholders in the system of labour relations in the countries of Central East and Southeast Europe, namely Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Croatia, Serbia, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia – now North Macedonia, Albania and Kosovo.Our hypothesis is that the development of trade unions in these regions, with their traditional company-centred organisation (syndicalism), is embedded in a discrete Central Eastern and South Eastern European type of neo-liberal economy. The cleavage of the EU in the East and West goes far beyond labour relations and the development of trade unions and determines other societal fields as well.This empirical evidence comes from a multi-level evaluation of a prolonged consultancy project (1998–2013) involving German, Dutch, European and global trade unions and political foundations and aimed at modernising selected trade unions in the CEE and SEE countries. Beyond the necessary analysis of documents, 92 expert interviews with trade unionists, representatives of employers’ associations and politicians were carried out between 2009 and 2013. The results were presented and discussed in five regional conferences involving different country groupings; these discussions influenced the final results by way of a reflexive process.In summary, because of the faltering process of modernising trade unions in these regions, the trade unions are endangered and may sink into insignificance.

“The Ruhr Remains our Nightmare”: The International Metalworkers’ Federation and European Integration in the Early Cold War

AbstractThe aim of this article is to study discussions within the International Metalworkers’ Federation (IMF) about the early postwar process of European integration at the intersection of international cooperation and nationally defined interests. The central question is the future of the Ruhr. This article argues that the developing Cold War, and the conflict between social democrats and communists, limited the reach of international trade-union cooperation but simultaneously strengthened the perceived need among social-democratic trade unionists in Western Europe to coordinate their policies in relation to supposed enemies. European integration in combination with the Cold War also highlighted a need to coordinate the resources of European and anti-communist trade unions in North America. The article shows that the IMF generally supported European integration as a defence against the hypothetical threat from the East, but made attempts to sway the process to include a pronounced social dimension.

Israeli Territory, Settlements, and European Union Trade: How Does the Legal and Territorial Jurisdictional Regime that Israeli Imposes throughout Israel-Palestine affect the EU-Israel Association Agreement and the EU-Palestinian Authority Association Agreement?

Israeli Territory, Settlements, and European Union Trade: How Does the Legal and Territorial Jurisdictional Regime that Israeli Imposes throughout Israel-Palestine affect the EU-Israel Association Agreement and the EU-Palestinian Authority Association Agreement?

Riding on the Coat-Tails of Traditional Cultural Expressions

Matters related to the protection of traditional cultural expressions (‘TCEs’) or expressions of folklore (‘EoFs’) are sensitive and intricate as a blend of legal, economic, philosophical and anthropological considerations jostle to capture their core features. This results in disparate views surrounding what should qualify as TCEs or EoFs, who should be considered their ‘owner’ (assuming that ownership per se is conceptually compatible with these items), which is the most appropriate legal protection regime and how broad their scope of protection should be. Drawing from these various accounts on TCEs, this article focuses on the interaction between TCEs and EoFs originating on the European continent and the European Union (‘EU’) trade mark legislation. Specifically, this article examines whether the limitations of the effects of trade mark rights and of the absolute grounds of refusal, as developed by the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union, are effective in preserving the cohesion of TCEs. This article advances the thesis that registration of TCEs and EoFs as trade marks generates an imbalance between the rights of the trade mark owner and the defences available to others under the EU trade mark law framework. Furthermore, such an imbalance is likely to hinder the unfettered circulation of TCEs and undermine their original meaning. Lastly, in some cases, trade mark registration of TCEs contributes to their appropriation and misappropriation. The article concludes that, de lege ferenda, the direct exclusion of TCEs as eligible subject matter for trade mark registration is preferable to seeking a post factum remedy.

EU economic integration agreements, Brexit and trade

The effects of regionalism on trade have been extensively evaluated within a gravity model framework. With the expected exit of the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union (EU), the prospect of regional disintegration has brought about a new impetus to studying trade policy effects. Using actual and forecast data for a panel of bilateral imports between the EU15 and the rest of the world, this paper examines the trade effects of EU economic integration agreements (EIAs), their evolution over time and the related counterfactual Brexit trade policy scenarios. Distinct trade effects are obtained for the EU trade related agreements; positive, significant and of similar magnitude for the EU and free trade agreement (FTA) coefficients, but negative and significant (and smaller in magnitude) for the regional economic partnership agreements (EPAs). The subperiod results suggest the positive coefficients of EU and FTA membership tend to diminish over time, implying earlier membership of EIAs came with greater trade benefits. Finally, in generating the predicted values for the trade effects of three alternative counterfactual Brexit scenarios (hard Brexit, hard Brexit plus, global Britain), the findings suggest an asymmetric effect depending on the perspective of the UK versus the EU. Whereas the UK’s trade would decline substantially with all three country groups (the EU, the FTAs and regional EPAs) and rise substantially with the rest of the world, only minor percentage changes are predicted for EU bilateral trade.

SkyKick: a disappointing end to an exciting series of events

Court of Justice of the European Union, Sky v SkyKick, Case C-371/18 (ECLI:EU:C:2020:45), 29 January 2020 Sky, the telecommunications giant, files for extremely long and broad European Union trade marks even though it does not intend to use its marks for all the goods and services concerned. It includes terms like ‘computer software’. The Court of Justice of the European Union was asked, among other things, whether: (i) broad or vague terms like ‘computer software’ were permissible or could cause a registration to be invalid and (ii) Sky’s filing strategy was bad faith. A European Union (EU) trade mark registration features a mark and a list of goods and services, the contents of which are governed by the Nice Classification and the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO)’s own practice. Since the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU)’s IP Translator decision in 2012 (C-307/10; ECLI:EU:C:2012:361) told us that applicants must identify their goods and services with ‘sufficient clarity and precision’, EU trade mark specifications have got longer and longer.

European Union trade mark round-up 2019

European Union trade mark round-up 2019

AMS Neve and Others (C-172/18): Looking for a Greater ‘Degree of Consistency’ Between the Special Jurisdiction Rule for EU Trade Marks and National Trade Marks

Abstract The Court of Justice of the European Union’s (CJEU) judgment in AMS Neve and others (C-172/18) clarifies how to interpret the concept ‘the Member State in which the act of infringement has been committed or threatened’ in the rule on special jurisdiction in the European Union Trade Mark Regulation. The CJEU held that Art. 125(5) should be interpreted to mean that the right holder may bring an action before an EU trade mark court of the Member State within which the consumers or traders to whom advertising and offers for sale are directed are located, even if the defendant took decisions and steps in another Member State to bring about that electronic display. With this judgment the CJEU introduces a targeting approach, which is something it has declined to do for the corresponding rule in Art. 7(2) Brussels Recast that applies to infringements of national trade marks. While the targeting approach is encouraging, the CJEU will need to clarify it to fulfil the objective of legal certainty. In addition, the CJEU appears to have interpreted Art. 125(5) EUTMR to exclude the Member State of activation. This is in contrast to Art. 7(2) Brussels Recast, which gives a right holder a choice between the Member State of activation and the Member State where the trade mark is registered. The article concludes that there is no justification for these differences in the special rules on jurisdiction applicable to EU trade marks and national trades.

Towards Explaining Varying Degrees of Politicization of EU Trade Agreement Negotiations

Over the last decade, European Union (EU) trade agreement negotiations in the form of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) with Canada have been strongly contested. By contrast, many other EU trade negotiations have sailed on with far less politicization, or barely any at all. In this contribution, we assess a series of plausible explanation for these very varying degrees of politicization across EU trade agreement negotiations—conceived of as the combination of polarization of opinions, salience given to them in public debate, and the expansion of the number of societal actors involved therein. Through a review of existing explanations, we show how each of these explanations faces a set of challenges. In the third section, we argue it is useful to conceive of these existing explanations as structural background conditions enabling agency on the part of interest group and civil society organizations. We therefore close by sketching how literature on the relationship between interest group mobilization and public opinion could inform further comparative research on trade policy negotiations, and on politicization of EU policy making in general.

Politicisation ‘Reversed’: EU Free Trade Negotiations with West Africa and the Caribbean

The politicisation of recent European Union (EU) trade negotiations such as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership or the Comprehensive and Economic Trade Agreement suggests that the more negotiations focus on deep integration issues, the higher the potential for polarization of values and interests. Yet, as we argue, this pattern does not necessarily hold true in EU trade negotiations with the developing world. In the case of the Economic Partnership Agreements with West Africa and the Caribbean region, the pattern of politicisation was ‘reversed’: Politicisation remained low in the Caribbean region, despite the inclusion of deep integration issues. To the contrary, negotiations became highly politicised in West Africa, where negotiations focussed on the traditional realm of trade in goods. Combining the insights from the literature on the role of non-state actors (NSAs) in trade policy-making in developing countries and on politicisation, we show that limited pre-existing mobilisation resources of NSAs, and few opportunities to engage with the political level of negotiations, imply that those affected by the inclusion of deep integration issues hardly mobilise. We also find that lack of technical expertise and the significance of traditional trade areas pre-empts NSAs from engaging in emotive framing on deep integration issues. This helps us to unpack the different patterns of politicisation across both regions: Politicisation in West Africa was facilitated by civil society actors who—in contrast to the Caribbean region—could draw on pre-existing networks, expertise, and direct access to the regional negotiation level.

The Selective Politicization of Transatlantic Trade Negotiations

European Union (EU) trade policy is in the spotlight. The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations triggered substantial public mobilization which emerged in a surge of literature on trade politicization. Notwithstanding politicization’s topicality and significance, it varies considerably over time, across trade agreements negotiations as well as across EU member states. By picking up on the latter, this article examines why, despite similar economic benefits potentially to be gained from trade liberalization, TTIP negotiations revealed striking differences in politicization in Germany and the UK. Understanding this variation is illustrated by highlighting the impact of some of TTIPs’ substantial issues mobilizing a range of materially and ideationally motivated stakeholders, who in turn shaped diverging governments’ trade positions of the countries under scrutiny. In explaining this selective politicization across two European countries, focus is on three explanatory variables, domestic material interests (business associations and trade unions), societal ideas (voters and non-governmental organizations [NGOs]) dominant in these countries’ domestic politics, as well as their interaction with national institutions. For this reason, the societal approach to governmental preference formation is employed which provides a detailed exploration of these three domestic factors, as well as the importance of their interdependence, in shaping the TTIP positions of the UK and German governments.