This scoping paper compiled by focuses on the potential risks for the EU from enshrining rights for Chinese investors in Europe in an inter-national investment treaty. It emphasises these “defensive” interests, because investment treaties by their very nature restrict the ability of a state to regulate or even restrict foreign investment.
Technical standards have been a driving engine behind globalisation. In recent years, they run the risk of turning into a core subject of great power competition over high technology. While Europe has benefited from technical standards, it may suffer if standards turn into a matter of power rivalry.
The rapid development of Indonesia’s palm oil industry, particularly over the last four decades, which to some extent has been ‘development at all costs’, has generated significant revenues but has caused simultaneously massive environmental degradation. Human rights violations in palm oil plantations are also widely documented.
To what extent should the state intervene in the economy? Political debates on this issue often follow a false dichotomy. We take for granted that the Left favours a high degree of state intervention, while onservatives are associated with support for free markets. The important question is not the extent of state intervention but rather the nature of the legislation that we must adopt in order to best serve the interests of the broad majority.
Many people assume, as if it were self-evident, that we live in a market economy. We like to believe that markets are guided by collective intelligence. Supply and demand set prices and the scale of production. Markets aggregate the decisions of many thousands of actors who, independently of one another, buy and sell goods and services. However, can we honestly say that we live in a market economy?
