Umfassende Freihandelsabkommen und Grundgesetz

»Comprehensive Trade Agreements and German Constitutional Law«

For some years now, free trade agreements have been concluded in international economic relations with a view to achieving much deeper and closer integration of the markets of the contracting states than was the case with traditional trade agreements. These free trade agreements are not only aimed at eliminating the obstacles to the exchange of goods and services at the border. Rather, agreements of this type have a profound effect on the internal organization of the internal legal order (»behind the border«). They provide for guidelines in the areas of environment, social affairs, work, etc. They also contain extensive institutional and procedural guidelines – for example on how to carry out administrative procedures. They are thus creating a new form of international public authority. CETA is such a new kind of agreement. Free trade agreements of this new type raise problems that are fundamentally different from the problems of traditional liberalisation of foreign trade policy. The study examines – from the point of view of German constitutional law – the distribution of powers between the EU and the Member States, the procedural requirements for the conclusion of such agreements and the institutional mechanisms necessary for the democratic legitimization of treaty bodies.