Normative conclusions and suggestions

The preceding chapters have been concerned with describing and comparing EU competition law and WTO law and evaluating the latter legal system based on law and economics benchmarks established for the former one. This was done separately for the three major areas of review, namely definition of the relevant market and 'likeness' (part I), theories of harm and effects (part II), and sanctions and remedies (part III). In order to give a fair and complete picture, chapter 11 begins by collecting the findings from the evaluations that took place in the comparative chapters (4, 7, and 10) and synthetizing them to create a holistic picture of how WTO law fares compared to EU competition law. Following that, the chapter ventures into giving normative suggestions for the improvement of WTO law, what this book was intended from the beginning to culminate in. Some normative suggestions are on the micro-level of very specific chirurgical interventions that can be made in the application and interpretation of aspects of WTO law that have been discussed in the book. Some other conclusions and suggestions are more systemic and general. They are all grouped together in a separate section of the book. The chapter concludes by exploring normative suggestions for increasing the WTO dispute settlement system's capacity to implement successfully a 'more economic approach', relating to the system's internal capacity, capacity sourced externally, and WTO Members' capacity.