State Aid and International Trade Law

There are various attempts to regulate subsidies outside the EU. This chapter offers a critical overview of the rules on subsidies included in multilateral, bilateral and regional trade agreement. After a brief analysis of the economic rationales for regulating subsidies, the focus shifts to the legal disciplines that can be found in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (‘GATT’), in the World Trade Organization (‘WTO’) and in Preferential Trade Agreements (‘PTAs’). In so doing, we continuously ask whether these attempts are effective in achieving their goals, what degree of integration they pursue, and we compare what happens outside the EU with EU State aid control. What comes out is a complex picture that can certainly enrich the perspective of the learned EU lawyer.