ArticleThe EU offer of service trade liberalization in the Doha Round: evidence of a not-yet-perfect customs union
The IssueIn the early eighties, the EU was once labelled "the not-so-perfect customs union" (Donges, 1981, p.11). The reason was that until the completion of the single market in 1992, EU member states still enjoyed national sovereignties in trade policies against non-member states, i.e., the right to temporarily waive the commitments of the common external trade policy under Art 115 EEC Treaty and to operate national quotas. These rights were gradually abandoned after 1992 when remaining national quotas for imports of bananas, Japanese cars and textiles and clothing were converted into community-wide regulations. However, the transition to a "perfect customs union" was limited to the industrial sector, in principle also to agriculture, because the EU Treaty in Art. 9 defines the customs union as a tariff union with common tariffs and tariff-equivalent charges against non-member states. As tariffs are mostly irrelevant for trade in services, there is no legal analogy in the Treaty between non-services and services concerning the customs union. An analogy, however, exists between the pre-1992 not-so-perfect customs union and the post-1992 internal market for some services, in particular professional services. Pelkmans (1997, p. 108) labels this market "uncommon" due to a large number of EU member state-specific regulations concerning recognition of profes-
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