Regional Trade Adjudication and the Rise of Sustainability Disputes: Korea—Labor Commitments and Ukraine—Wood Export Bans

TSD chapters challenge RTA panels to consider how far the addition of sustainability obligations reconfigures the very object of trade agreements and/or requires reconsidering their scope. In this Essay, I argue that the two reports in which TSD provisions have been invoked thus far diverge on this core question. In Korea—Labor Commitments, the panel suggested that TSD chapters alter the center of gravity of trade agreements, making sustainability an element integral to the “trade” pursued by the EU–Korea Free Trade Agreement (FTA). By contrast, the panel in Ukraine—Wood Export Ban interpreted away the tectonic-shifting potential of the TSD commitments in the EU–Ukraine Association Agreement (AA). While analyzing ostensibly unrelated issues, both panels were required to address the impact of TSD commitments on the broader normative framework set up by their respective RTAs. I propose that these two panels diverge on the basic question of the extent to which the integration of TSD commitments alters the very nature of a trade agreement.