Duty-Free Market Access

China’s raw materials diplomacy and unregulated purchasing of minerals in Africa and Latin America, as well as its domestic raw materials export quota, have for years been eyed with suspicion by state and private actors. Industrialized countries want to uphold and extend free market access to raw materials, but also strengthen their political accountability and sustainability. However, critics argue that in contrast, China, the world’s largest metals and minerals trading power, has taken the opposite course, ignoring social and environmental standards, reinforcing authoritarian governments, and erecting trade barriers. China is faced with several interrelated challenges in its resource diplomacy and governance. This article claims that an identifiable, chronological connection and pattern has existed between China’s aid and investment diplomacy for resources since the late 1990s, free trade agreements since the 2000s, Beijing’s resource nationalism since the 2010s, and the reform process of national and privately organized transnational governance toward sustainability in the present day. Is China socializing with emerging transnational standards on mining and resource extraction in the developing world, and if so, why? This article argues that China’s raw materials governance, including corporate governance, has entered a phase of reform to pacify the external environment and to implement the Belt and Road Initiative. In theoretical terms, China’s raw materials governance will continue to emphasize neoliberal and neo-mercantilist goals, cushioned by globalist features.

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Digital borders in the European Union

Studia Prawnicze KUL ◽

10.31743/sp.5549 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 193-217

Author(s):

Carmen Parra Rodriguez

Keyword(s):

European Union ◽

Digital Media ◽

Market Access ◽

Free Market ◽

Global Solutions ◽

Single Market ◽

The European Union ◽

Protection Measures ◽

Digital Platforms ◽

Provision Of Services

The world is facing a new geoeconomic order in which digital media has changed the rules of the game. Borders are fuzzy and both companies and consumers try to strike a balance between free market access and the restrictions that protected economic interests establish. Based on these parameters, the European Union is trying to restructure the single market by applying global solutions that nevertheless collide with the protection measures demanded by economic operators, blocking the provision of services and the free movement of goods through so-called geoblocking. This practice consists of blocking access to services and/or the offer of products depending on the geographical origin of the user/client, either by redirecting users to local websites or simply by restricting access to their product brochure. The fact that consumer associations and users of digital platforms have considered this blockade as a real attack on the digital single market has led the European Union to seek legislative solutions. That is why the European Commission has promoted Regulation 2018/302, which aims to prevent unjustified geographical blocking and other forms of discrimination based on the nationality, place of residence or place of establishment of clients in the internal market. The justification of these protective measures as well as their location in the global geoeconomic space are studied in this work.

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