Guest lecture by professor Thomas Cottier on WTO law and practice

On 25 April 2022, Professor Thomas Cottier – a prominent expert on WTO Law and International Economic Law, one of the standing arbitrators of the Multi-Party Interim Appeal Arbitration Arrangement – gave a guest lecture on the Multi-Party Interim Appeal Arbitration Arrangement (MPIA) to a group of students of the International Law Faculty (UWED). During this interactive session, students were acquainted with the rules and procedures of MPIA arbitration, as well as with some practical issues of the WTO dispute settlement system.

Speaker’s biography

Thomas Cottier, former Managing Director of the World Trade Institute (WTI), is Professor Emeritus of European and International Economic Law at the University of Bern. He published widely in the field of international economic law, with a particular focus on constitutional theory and intellectual property. He directed the national research programme on trade law and policy (NCCR International Trade Regulation: From Fragmentation to Coherence) located at the WTI from 2006 to 2014. He is an associate editor of several journals. He was a visiting professor at the Graduate Institute, Geneva, the Paris I Sorbonne, University of Barcelona, and regularly teaches at the Europa Institut Saarbrücken, Germany, at Wuhan University, China, at the University of Torino and more recently at the University of Ottawa, Canada. He was a member of the Swiss National Research Council from 1997 to 2004 and served on the board of the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI) Rome during the same period. He served the Baker & McKenzie law firm as a counsel from 1998 to 2005. He held several positions in the Swiss External Economic Affairs Department and was the Deputy-Director General of the Swiss Intellectual Property Office. Prof. Cottier has a long-standing involvement in GATT/WTO activities. He served on the Swiss negotiating team of the Uruguay Round from 1986 to 1993, first as Chief negotiator on dispute settlement and subsidies for Switzerland and subsequently as Chief negotiator on TRIPs. He has served as a member or chair of several GATT and WTO panels and currently serves on a high-level panel reviewing the International Health Regulations of the World Health Organization.

About guest lecture series

The guest lecture series is organized within the elective course on ‘WTO Law and Practice’ for the undergraduate students of the International Law Faculty (UWED). This course was designed and developed by the WTI in the realization of the project: “Facilitating the Process of Uzbekistan’s accession to the World Trade Organization”, which is funded by the European Union and implemented by the International Trade Centre (Geneva, Switzerland) in cooperation with the Ministry of Investments and Foreign Trade of the Republic of Uzbekistan.

This spring term the series will also include the following online guest lectures:

• “Recent developments on trade policy – EU” by Michael Hahn (Monday 30 May 2022, 13:00 PM to 14:20 PM Tashkent time)
• “Recent developments on trade policy – China” by Hong Zhao (Monday 6 June 2022, 13:00 PM to 14:20 PM Tashkent time)
• “Accession to the WTO” by Juneyoung Lee (Monday 13 June 2022, 13:00 PM to 14:20 PM Tashkent time)

See also

The UWED establishes ties with the World Trade Institute of the University of Bern