The EU's Request for Arbitration Under the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement

On 20 June 2019, the European Union's (EU's) Delegation to Ukraine submitted a Note Verbale to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine requesting ion behalf of the European Union, the establishment of an arbitration panel pursuant to Article 306 of the Association Agreement of 21 March 2014 between the European Union and the European Atomic Energy Community and their Member States, of the one part, and Ukraine, of the other part'. The dispute concerns Ukraine's export restrictions on timber and unsawn wood of certain species, as well as on unprocessed timber of all species, for a period of ten years. While the restrictions appear to be legally difficult to justify for Ukraine, the more interesting and noteworthy element to this dispute is that it is the first trade dispute that the EU is pursuing under a bilateral preferential trade agreement, even though it relates to disciplines that mirror World Trade Organization (%VTO) rules and could as well be pursued in the framework of WTO dispute settlement. The article reviews the case and discusses the significance and the EU's deliberate choice of dispute settlement within the context of the trade agreement.