Gli accordi commerciali di ultima generazione dell’Unione europea e i loro rapporti col sistema multilaterale degli scambi

The paper analyzes the latest EU’s international activities in trade matters and, in particular, the new generation of agreements, focusing also on those still under negotiation, such as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with the United States, in order to try and highlight some general features. The system of EU trade agreements appears thus constructed, by the principle of consistency, according to a fractal logic, since it reproduces, albeit on a smaller scale, the normative model of the founding Treaties, whose fundamental principles, which mostly incorporate non- trade values , are taken as a basis also of the former. The work then studies both the legal and factual mechanisms by which EU trade agreements could affect the World Trade Organization system of rules.