EURASIAN CHALLENGES TO INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC LAW

Amandine Cayol, Hye-Hwal Seong, Remus Titiriga, Pierre Chabal

The present book blends in the academic wish to understand Eurasian legal evolutions and the need to bring together, in an international conference, colleagues from, this time, five countries (Kazakhstan, France, Korea, Russia, Spain). Professor Bing CHEN (Nankai University, the PRC), an active participant in the 4^th conference (2019, Almaty) and book, was unable to present his text Promotion of data competition in the post- Covid era to the dual-circulation development of China’s economy at this 5^th edition (2021, France). The organisers look forward to hosting him at the next and 6^th edition (2023, Korea).

Such inter-university research follows a guiding principle: national and regional legal systems and their responses to the challenge of change must be studied both in their slow, institutional evolutions and in their hasted adaptations in times of crises. The need to legislate en temps réel must integrate the difficulty to anticipate on further challenges: violence and terrorism, health hazards and pandemics, regime-change and newly elected bold leaderships.

Our thanks are due to our universities. They supported us, in a context of a Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (2020) touching the Asia-Pacific and Eurasian spaces in a broader perspective than, strictly, international business law or even of international trade law. Such support helped us mobilise analyses drawing from legal sciences the social sciences at large. International economic law encompasses both public law and private law, holistically, by contrast with academic traditions, for example French, where this duality of public and private law serves as a summa divisio of and for law scholars and research institutes.

Participants to this (online) 5^th edition of the Kazakh-French-Korean conferences see the economic emergence of Eurasia as resulting from economic globalisation over the last sixty years. The post-WWII economic reconstruction of the world yields an extra momentum that is multiplied ←13 | 14→

Innocent Mutabazi

It is a great honour and pleasure for me to write this foreword for the present book edited by prominent experts in legal, political and international studies.

Normandie Université, a cluster of three Norman Universities, two Engineering Schools and one Architecture School, has developed a strategy towards its dedicated international development that included most notably the organisation of such international events, the promotion of excellence of research performed in its academic institutions in order to increase both international visibility and worldwide attractiveness.

Research activities conducted at Normandie Université are structured in five pluri-disciplinary fields. Among these, the cluster “Humanities, Culture and Social Sciences” is a thriving one. Normandy as a region, due to its rich recent history, helps promote peace and friendship among peoples and cooperation among academics.

The present times are characterised by a fast-moving world where information and political actions are dominated by new media and communication tools. This situation can generate a feeling that citizens cannot truly control anything any longer. Law, Political science and International Relations can help, in the pursuit of truth, to contextualise different events in their historic and geographic environment.

The conference Eurasian challenges to international economic law after Brexit and in the context of the Covid-19 was held during the Covid lockout caused by the on-going pandemics. This prevented the audience from participating “physically” in the conference. However, exchanges by visio-conference were very successful thanks to the dedication of the organisation committee and the quality of the invited speakers.

I thank Pierre Chabal, Amandine Cayol, Zhuldyz Sairambaeva, Hye-Hwal Seong and Remus Titiriga for their efforts to make the workshop successful and for editing the present book to which I wish a large professional success and world-wide audience.

Sagyngaliy Aidarbayev

Since the last Kazakh-French-Korean international law conference, held in Almaty in April 2019, there have been dramatic changes in the world.

First of all, the Covid-19 pandemic has become the severest challenge that humanity has faced in the 21st century. Most experts agree that, having become a landmark event, the pandemic will lead to a fundamental shift in the social order and in the way people think. Changes under the influence of the Covid-19 pandemic are already impacting the socio-economic and political-legal spheres of society. Moreover, the world may experience geopolitical and geo-economic shifts that can very well change the place of individual states and regions in the future world order.

In addition, the final stage of the UK’s withdrawal process from the European Union superimposed itself onto the coronavirus epidemic. “Brexit” inflicted not only serious political and socio-economic losses on the Union, but reputational losses as well. It also raised the issue of the limits of integration if the world’s most successful regional economic integration grouping could face the need to revise the methods of development of its very integration project.

These factors – the Covid-19 pandemic and “Brexit” – thus became a challenge for the entire Eurasian space, specifically in the legal area and for international economic law. This state of affairs raises questions.

Among the host of ongoing international political and legal problems, which are the most relevant for the states and regions of Eurasia, as well as for the entire Eurasian continent, from the point of view of French, Korean and Kazakh researchers? The answers can be found in this book. Indeed, it presents the view of researchers from both the eastern and western extremities of the Eurasian continent, as well as from the center of Eurasia, as to general political and legal issues.

Remus Titiriga

The book gathers analyses of international economic law (tax law and tax policy, international trade law and international trade policy, international private law, intellectual property law, e-services, e-transactions, law of personal data protection, matters of security balanced by economic considerations) for actors in Eurasia (states or integrative unions such as the EU or the EAEU) or states interacting with Eurasia (such as the USA). Its chapters focus on the dynamic of international economic law under the impact of events such as a U.S. Presidency imposing a populist/nationalist economic legacy, the Covid-19 pandemic producing tremendous economic upheaval, the Brexit process of the U.K. leaving the EU and other Eurasian relevant events.

Part I covers trade and financial issues. Remus Titiriga, looking at rhetorical change and real continuity in U.S. trade policies toward Eurasia and China, considers that particular rhetoric of political change hides the bipartisan continuity in international trade policies of the U.S. toward China and Eurasia. While the Trump administration took a bolder stance than the Obama administration on trade sanctions and China and other countries, a Hillary Presidency would have used the same such instruments even if under a different rhetoric. Given these continuities (which include a sceptical attitude towards the legal remedies within the WTO), the author considers that the trade war and the sanctions adopted by the U.S. toward China will remain in place or will be strengthened under the Biden administration.

Marie Dumarçay, looking at competition law and the Covid-19 pandemic, focuses on the international (EU) or national (France, Italy, Singapore, etc.) adaptation of rules protecting free competition under the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. The author notices the increased use of competition mechanisms imposed by the risks of the pandemic. On the other hand, she underlines the ‘softening’ of the rules about objectives of traditional competition protection.