D5.2 – Role of standards in trade agreements

The deliverable addresses the role of standards in trade agreements and other forms of international collaborations, e.g., digital partnerships. Based on the review of the limited literature and the screening of several databases documented in D5.1, we started in a first step with analyzing the role of standardisation in EU’s Digital Partnerships and the EU-US Trade and Technology Council, which is eventually summarized comparatively. In the second step, we identified the trade agreements of the EU referencing standards based on the database Legal Trade Intelligence and Negotiation Adviser (TINA). Then, the role of standardisation and standards in almost forty trade agreements is analyzed. In the final step, the insights based on the EU’s Digital Partnerships, the EU-US Trade and Technology Council, and the EU’s trade agreements are compared. Finally, the first implications for the further work of INSTAR, particularly the International Task Forces, are derived.