Trade in services and investment negotiations are, broadly speaking, about two key categories of commitments:
- the Market Access Commitment –the commitment to let each other’s services suppliers or investors have access to domestic service market and
- the National Treatment Commitment –the commitment to treat foreign services suppliers or investors no less favourably than one’s own service suppliers or investors.
Market Access: This implies that a Party may not impose on service suppliers or investors of the other Party certain types of quantitative restrictions that would limit access to its market, such as limitations on:
- The number of suppliers or services operations,
- The total value of transactions,
- The participantion of foreign capital by quantity.
National Treatment (NT): This implies that a Party may not discriminate agains the other Party’s service suppliers and investors in favour of its own domestic service suppliers or investors.
A typical type of discrimination would be to impose more restrictive conditions to a foreign supplier for the supply of a given service than to the Party’s own providers – for example, by limiting foreigners’ voting rights in an enterprise irrespective of their level of investment.
Source: Services and investment in EU trade deals, April 2016
