Article 9 of the Treaty of Rome, as amended by the 1992 Treaty on European Union (the Maastricht Treaty), declares that the European Community “shall be based upon a customs union which shall cover all trade in goods and which shall involve the prohibition between Member States of customs duties on imports and exports and of all charges having equivalent effect”.1 The principle was thereby established of the free movement of goods within the European Community. The Treaty does not define “goods” for the purposes of the Articles (9 to 37) which make up the Title dealing with “Free Movement of Goods”, but the European Court of Justice has held that “goods” means “products which can be valued in money and which are capable, as such, of forming the subject of commercial transactions”. From this it is clear that works of art are included in the “goods” that are intended to circulate freely within the Community.

The European Economic Area (EEA) Agreement signed in May 1992 between the European Free Trade Area (EFTA) States, the European Community (EC) and the EC member States' seeks to establish “a dynamic and homogeneous” area by extending provisions which apply within the European Community to the EEA.2 The first decision of the EFTA Court,3 interpreting the EEA Agreement to determine its application within the legal orders of the EFTA States, concerned the Finnish alcohol monopoly. The Restamark decision was awaited with great interest to know to what extent the EFTA Court would follow the European Court of Justice's interpretation of the EC Treaty in order to achieve the aims of the EEA Agreement.

The European Court's efforts to locate the outer limits of Article 30's control of national measures have been discussed before in these surveys of current developments in EC law.1 The Court was tempted to use Article 30 to catch a wide range of measures that affected trade even where the rules applied in an even-handed manner to all traders. The most notable example of this expansionist trend was found in the so-called Sunday trading cases, in which Article 30 was exploited to challenge rules restricting commercial activity in England and Wales even though the rules did not put cross-border strategies at any particular disadvantage. The Court pursued an erratic course before finally ruling the laws compatible with Article 30.2 Academic comment, though nuanced in its detailed appreciation of the Court's stance, was largely convinced that Article 30 had been extended beyond both its intent and necessary function in the process of market integration.3

As part of the conditions for WTO accession, China is committed to a number of additional obligations stipulated in the accession documents. This article will mainly focus on the contingent trade instruments in this context, which WTO Members are entitled to take against products of Chinese origin. In this regard, the WTO rules to be examined include the buffering mechanism under Sections 15 and 16 of the Accession Protocol and the textile-specific safeguard mechanism under paragraph 242 of the Working Party Report. The discriminatory and non-beneficial nature of the latter makes it the most unfair component in China's accession. In some cases, these China-only instruments also go against some fundamental WTO principles. For example, revivals of grey-area measures and the bilateral approach are fairly evident therein, which are no longer advocated and even prohibited under the WTO system.

The UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts have appeared in a small but steady trickle of investment treaty arbitrations over the last decade. This article considers the use of the Principles by investment tribunals on questions of both domestic law and international law. It suggests that reference to the Principles can play an important legitimating role on questions of domestic law, but that this should not replace reference to the applicable law. On questions of international law, reference to the Principles may be justified by resort to the general principles of law. However, the article contends that there is only a limited role for the UNIDROIT Principles where the primary and secondary rules of investment protection are already found in treaties and custom. In addition, while general principles have historically been drawn from domestic private law, there is increasing recognition that general principles of public law are more relevant to investment arbitration. Given this, arbitrators resolving questions of international law must be cautious in references to the UNIDROIT Principles, a quintessentially private law instrument.

The Orthodox position on the legal effect of treaties in English law is easy to state. Treaties are entered into by the Executive acting under prerogative powers. The exercise of these powers is not, even in the post-GCHQ2 dispensation, a matter within the jurisdiction of the courts, so that the desirability of entering into a treaty cannot be challenged in the courts.3 However, since any prerogative power must be exercised campatibly with legislation, if there is an extant statutory restriction upon making a particular treaty or providing a particular procedure as a condition upon which the prerogative power may be exercised, then compliance with the statutory provisions is a matter for the courts.4

There is a question mark over the future of the nation-state in Europe. National monetary policy has been transferred to the European level in most European Union member States. Over the next ten years the EU will have a stronger role in defence and foreign policy, immigration and law enforcement. The very policies that supposedly define the concept of national sovereignty are no longer the exclusive domain of national governments.

Where a pregnant woman travels and subsequently gives birth to a child abroad, should the left behind father be able to petition for the ‘return’ of his child under the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction? An affirmative answer would not only presuppose that the abduction of the child had been in breach of the father's actually exercised rights of custody, but would also depend on which country, if any, the child was habitually resident in immediately before the ‘abduction’.

The 1985 European Communities Directive on Product Liability1 aims to harmonise member State product liability rules and to improve the level of protection of victims by basing the liability of producers for physical injury and damage to personal goods on the proof that the victim's damage was caused by a defect in the product supplied. On 19 May 1998, ten years after the deadline for transposition, France finally enacted legislation incorporating the Directive into national law.2 The Directive was incorporated into English law by Part I of the Consumer Protection Act 1987.