This project aims to deepen the knowledge and dissemination of essential legal issues for the organization of international trade relations.

At a time when the paradigm of free trade has been called into question and protectionist economic trade policies, which once marked the beginning of the crisis of the late 1920s, are making a worrying comeback on the international scene, the project addresses its objective through the analysis of five perfectly distinguishable but interrelated milestones. These five milestones are as follows:

1. The institutional dimension relating to the centrality of the WTO dispute settlement system.

2. The incorporation of mechanisms for the protection of foreign investment into the trade agreement regime (particularly in the EU's new-generation treaties, which at the same time seek to multilateralize them).

3. The use of unilateral trade measures (legal and illegal) that alter trade flows.

4. The weight acquired by new technologies in the development of digital commerce, as well as their protection mechanisms (in particular intellectual property rights lato sensu) and their interaction with the protection of consumers in general and of their privacy, and along with the study of these legal realities, which include all the above-mentioned and connected aspects in the context of the digital economy and the return to protectionism.

5. The gender perspective has been included as a cross-cutting approach given its importance in the context of international trade relations.

The aim will be to assist in the analysis of the existing situation, seeking to propose approaches in the search for proposals for action to meet the challenges posed by international trade today in these areas, considering them both individually and as a whole.