This course examines the EU’s external economic relations, with an emphasis on the last generation of major free trade agreements concluded by the EU with third countries, such as the CETA, and especially on investment promotion and protection agreements both for attracting investment capital to Europe and for the access of European investments to third countries. The investment sector, in particular, has relatively recently been integrated into the EU’s common commercial policy by the Lisbon Treaty, and the transition from bilateral regulation at the level of Member States’ investment relations with third countries to multilateral regulation at the level of the EU’s relations with these countries is one of the biggest challenges that the EU will be facing in the coming years. The latter is a great challenge in the context of the EU’s efforts to become a leading economic power in a rapidly changing world in the post-Covid era.

A special place in this course is dedicated to the study of the relations in the context of the international economic system under renegotiation between the EU with its other developed partners, and especially with the USA, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, between the EU and the emerging economies, with emphasis on China.