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Global Europe and strategic sovereignty ] 163 > China 18% (2) 15% y Oo India LI 7% JL me 9% 12% Figure 11: Share of world GDP (PPP) from 2016 to 2050 Source: PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2017 Two recent key initiatives were the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), which was supposed to create closer economic cooperation with the US, and the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA). While the CETA deal was signed, after long negotiations, and ratified, the TTIP was never concluded due to the opposition by President Trump and his administration in particular. However, both TTIP and CETA provoked extensive criticism in Europe.’ Still, despite the fact that 250,000 people protested against the TTIP, the CETA, and the further liberalising of trade in 2015 in Berlin, to name this single case, the European Commission's policy to propagate free trade agreements remains nearly uncontested at the Union's upper political levels. Free trade and investor protection agreements are being criticised from at least three different angles, which deserve our attention. First, even from a liberal perspective, there is criticism of the extensive use of bilateral trade agreements, as this method establishes preferences and exclusivist regional trade areas, which are often unfair vis-a-vis third countries that are not part of them (Bhagwati 2008; 2013). Even though regional cooperation and bilateral trade agreements have become standard instruments in international trade regulation over the past decades, they often undermine multilateral World Trade Organisation (WTO) arrangements and discriminate against third countries. So, while the new norm - preferential treatment - sounds 4 Especially regarding TTIP, critics claimed that such agreements had the potential to force nations to lower their environmental standards, allow the infiltration of GMO products onto European markets, and outsource decision-making to special investor-state courts, limiting state power in important matters (Ziegler 2016).
