the SHAPE project: origin and May 2015 conference
As hinted at in the ‘about’ page, I strongly believe that history matters. The SHAPE project has been in the making for quite a few years now. I clearly remember when the “flux capacitator” moment (I am talking to you Back to the Future nerds out there!) came. It was a nice September evening in 2012 in Geneva. Few folks of the WTO Rules Division, headed by Johann Human, organized a dinner at Pizzeria Smeraldo, not far from the WTO premises. There was a small and nice company there. The catalyst of the whole discussion was however Gary Horlick, as always rich of wonderful – and insightful – anecdotes about the history of WTO subsidy rules, and about his experience at the US DOC in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It was not a pedantic and erudite lecture. It was extremely lively – and not only because of Gary’s wonderful capacity of tell stories – but, more deeply, because what he was saying to all of us was directly related to the discussions, issues and predicaments of subsidy law and policy at the time (and, I would say, now). Out of the restaurant, while walking back to the hotel, I distinctly remember saying to Gary: “Wow, I want to write a history of subsidy laws. What do you think about it?”
So did SHAPE come about. Sharing my sentiments, and the love for legal historical inquiries, two colleagues and friends (Mona Pinchis-Paulsen, LSE; Juan-Jorge Piernaz-Lopez, Murcia) joined in.
Now, in 2023, despite few funders’ rejections (in his contribution to the e-book below, Mike Finger noted that “in the end we all succumb” to funding agencies’ perceptions), and a necessary rethinking, the project is still alive and kicking – inasmuch as its main objectives inform my current and future research.
SHAPE aims to inquire the forces shaping subsidy and State aid laws. This is done through a legal historical investigation of the laws at both the international and European levels. The project premise is that subsidy laws are not static, but the outcome of a perpetual shaping process driven by the interaction with changing political, social and economic circumstances. In order to understand the law as an output, studies must therefore assess these forces.
The project is not simply a quest for the ‘authentic’ or indeed the ‘original’ meaning of the law, but rather for a full understanding of the rich process of genesis and maturation of the law. The goal is to cast light on the practical obstacles encountered by treaty drafters, enforcers and adjudicators when creating, interpreting and applying subsidy rules. To uncover the alternatives they had, the choices they made, and to explain why what happened happened.
SHAPE is based on the assumption that a historical approach is inherent in legal analysis. Scrutinizing the past provides both a fundamental sense of origin and meaning of the current rules (which is crucial for legal interpretation), as well as demonstrating the role of relativity or contingency since some issues and solutions are system-, or period-specific (which may be helpful especially for law reform).
Ultimately, the motivation of this legal historical analysis lies in the belief that most of the issues that we are dealing with today have, in one way or another, already been confronted in the past. This is why effective regulatory reform – which is urgently required to deal with the rapid pace of change in the global political and economic landscape – must be based on a thorough appreciation of the genesis and development of existing rules. Knowledge, also historical knowledge, is the first step for building the foundations of any serious law reform.
The project, which will proceed in discrete steps analyzing the key legal and judicial developments at key junctures in time, has been kick-started with a major two-day conference in May 2015 in Birmingham where about fifty former and current negotiators, diplomats, officials and scholars gathered to discuss about the forces shaping subsidy laws domestically and internationally. The proceedings were published in 2016.
Apart from an oral history, which lies at the core of the project, this site’s page will include regular updates of the various research steps I make, alone or jointly with other scholars, in this project.
the 2016 e-book
2016. (edited, with Jennifer Hawkins), What Shapes the Law? Reflections on the History, Law, Politics and Economics of International and European Subsidy Disciplines (Florence: Global Governance Program, European University Institute), 142 + xviii
Considering viewings and downloads, this e-book has been extremely successful, showing the importance of legal historical analysis.
“What makes this four-part work especially valuable is that many of the commentators played key roles over previous decades in conceptualizing and negotiating subsidy disciplines. The creation of this permanent record of participant views is a gift to practitioners, teachers, and policymakers. As the late Julio Lacarte Muró, a founder of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and its predecessor institutions, explains in a Foreword to the volume, this electronic volume ‘sets out objectively and fully the multiple sides of a question that is due to exercise the world trading community now and in the future”, Steve Charnovitz, World Trade Review (2020) 488-491
the May 2015 interviews
This exceptional and unique gathering of key actors offered the opportunity to conduct few in-person-interviews. With the permission of the interviewees (or of the right holders) the recordings are now made public through this site for the first time. While the focus of most interviews is on the law and policy of subsidies, the different experience of the interviewees made inroads into more general institutional and domestic policy aspects possible. The resulting interviews thus offer something (better: a lot!) to many – not only to subsidy law nerds – with events and testimonies going way back to the early 1960s and navigating up to more recent times.
NB: in the near future I will add few background notes on each individual interview as well as the relevant transcripts. More recordings, dating back to 2015 or more recent times, will also be added.
interview of Gary Hufbauer, May 19, 2015
interview of Mike Finger, May 20, 2015
interview of Peter Williams, May 20, 2015
interview of John Greenwald, May 20, 2015
interview of Terry Collins-Williams, May 20, 2015
the September 2022 interviews
Eventually, in September 2022 I managed to interview two key contributors to the May 2015 Birmingham conference, two witnesses, indeed key players, in shaping GATT and WTO subsidy disciplines: Gérard Depayre and Jan Woznowski.
Gérard Depayre’s interview transcript, September 29, 2022
Jan Woznowski’s interview transcript, September 29, 2022
the origins of EU State aid law: take 1
In a forthcoming chapter for a collection on the 70th anniversary of the ECSC, published under the aegis of the EU Historical Archives of the European University Institute (Florence), and in a journal article (extended version!), I analyze the very first case (Steenkolenmijnen, 1961) where the European Court of Justice was called to give a definition of the terms “aid and subsidies” in Article 4 of the ECSC Treaty for the first time.
My analysis is largely based on biographical and historical contextual analysis, on the contemporary literature, on the exposure of key actors to the Treaty negotiations, as well as on the direct examination of the files of the litigation.
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