Who Recognises Technical Standards in TTIP?

Current political discussions on the relationship of technical standards to the Transatlantic, Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) concern the question whether TTIP can provide a transatlantic level playing field for technical standards, and whether this will negatively affect technical standards in the European Union (EU) and the United States (US). This piece will instead take a different view on technical standards in TTIP. It will switch the perspective to an individual one, namely to the question who decides on standards. It follows the hypothesis that steering principles on mutual recognition and harmonization of technical standards largely depend on who will be given the power to decide on conformity and level of technical standards in the TTIP. As a basis for such an institutional analysis, this piece will evaluate the leaked documents from the TTIP negotiations. The analysis follows the framework for legal institutional analysis identified in the introduction to this book. The introduction highlights that, as legal applications of regime theory and organisation theory, the acts of autonomy and power by institutions are the real subjects of legal investigation of institutionalisation. This largely reflects an approach to institutionalism voiced by Neil Komesar in the 1990ies. As a result, I will identify and map the respective decision-makers and will illustrate the potential impact of these choices on technical standard-setting.

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