The Institute of Law, Politics and Development is pleased to announce the 2016 AgLaw Colloquium which will be held on Thursday 20 and Friday 21 October, 2016.

The AgLaw Colloquium is intended to be an opportunity for early-career researchers (Ph.D. candidates and post-docs) to present and discuss their results and methodological approaches in a supportive environment. It is inspired by the wish to share on-going analysis, questions and exploration fields in agricultural law from a global perspective.

Based on the feedback received from the 2015 edition, the AgLaw Colloquium represents a key opportunity to bring scholars together from all over the world and to build a network of young researchers interested in the legal aspects of the agriculture, food and the environment.

2016 THEME

Regional trade agreements (RTAs) have been regarded as an important alternative to multilateralism in the last decade. More recently the scale and scope of most of these agreements have been eclipsed by the level of ambition of a number of new ‘mega-regional’ negotiations (e.g. TTIP, TPP, RCEP, CFTA), which have the potential to significantly reshape the global trade landscape. These so-called mega-RTAs are deep integration partnerships between countries or regions with a major share of world trade and foreign direct investments. In this integration the emphasis is on the quest for regulatory compatibility. Indeed, several regional agreements have moved beyond border measures to include deeper forms of rules and institutions.

Agriculture is one of the main areas in which parties to these talks are seeking to achieve mutual concessions. The 2016 AgLaw Colloquium is aimed at investigating the multiple effects of the current developments in the international trade system on the agri-food sector. Important legal implications may arise from the introduction of additional frameworks in the rules that countries follow to ensure food safety, animal and plant health, and environmental protection. They may have broader systemic consequences if the new regulatory frameworks come to be seen as establishing standards and norms which become benchmarks for subsequent negotiations, including those in the multilateral trading system.

For more information or questions, please contact Colloquium Organisers (Mariagrazia Alabrese, Lucia Polackova, Andrea Saba,  Francesca Spagnuolo) at colloquium@sssup.it.