Description

On 21 April 2016, it was announced that Indonesia has met the final requirements of its Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) with the EU and will be the world’s first country to issue licenses for the sale of ‘legal timber products’ into the EU.1 The VPA is part of the EU’s Forestry Law Enforcement Governance and Trade (FLEGT) initiative, which aims to eliminate timber that is logged unsustainably and in violation of domestic environmental laws from entering the EU.2 Timber originating in a country that has entered a VPA with the EU is exempted from due diligence requirements otherwise imposed by EU law.3 This regulatory initiative is a striking example of the global reach of EU law, which has the potential to shape law, social norms and business practices in the EU’s external trading partners.

There is a rapidly growing body of literature on the global reach of EU Law, including its use of extraterritoriality, territorial extension and the ‘Brussels effect’. Scott developed the territorial extension concept to refer to the phenomenon where the application of a measure is triggered by the existence of a territorial connection with the EU but where an assessment of compliance with the law requires an evaluation of foreign conduct and/or third country law.4 The above example of timber regulation is a case in point. EU environmental law is rich with examples of territorial extension including regulations concerning illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing (IUU fishing), and waste management (including ship recycling). Most of the scholarship has thus far focused on mapping and analyzing these multiple manifestations of territorial extension in EU law, with less being written about the regulatory, social and environmental impacts in the jurisdictions that are affected by the territorial extension of EU law.

By bringing together scholars from the EU and Asia, this small ‘brainstorming’ workshop is intended to inspire thinking about issues such as the impacts and consequences of the territorial extension of EU law in developing countries, justifications for territorial extension, and whether and how regulatory innovation in third countries (in response to territorial extension) has in turn influenced EU law.

At this stage, the workshop will focus on three issue areas: forestry governance, waste management and fisheries management. We are, however, open to suggestions to expand this initial focus. Participants are encouraged to share their research, regardless of whether it is at an early or advanced stage and can look forward to constructive engagement and feedback.

Finally, one of the aims of this workshop is to discuss the subsequent stages of developing this project on ‘Asia and the Global Reach of EU Law’. We are committed to a second workshop in 2020 to be convened by the Asia Pacific Centre of Environmental Law in Singapore.

About the Conveners

Joanne Scott is Professor of European Law at the EUI. Her research interests lie in environmental law and climate change law and she has been developing the theme of EU extraterritoriality in her work following the award of a Major Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust (2012‐2014). This workshop is part of her current research project on the Global Reach of EU Law.

Jolene Lin is Associate Professor of Law at the National University of Singapore. She is also director of the Asia Pacific Centre for Environmental Law. Her research interests lie in transnational environmental law and climate change law. Her publications include Governing Climate Change: Global Cities and Transnational Lawmaking (Cambridge University Press) and a forthcoming article on climate change litigation in the Global South.