Assessing EU Concessions for Service Trade Liberalization in the Doha Round. What Frequency Indices Suggest

The responsibility for the contents of the working papers rests with the author, not the Institute. Since working papers are of a preliminary nature, it may be useful to contact the author of a particular working paper about results or caveats before referring to, or quoting, a paper. Any comments on working papers should be sent directly to the author. Assessing EU Concessions for Service Trade Liberalization in the Doha Round. What Frequency Indices Suggest While the EU is a customs union in merchandise trade (goods), it has not yet reached this stage of integration in service trade. How far the EU is from a customs union in service trade is very difficult to assess because of the nonquantitative nature of trade restrictions in this sector. The paper tries to present first indirections of how far the EU is from being a customs union by calculating frequency indices of trade measures using the Hoekman approach based on the February 2003 EU first offer regarding service trade in the Doha Round. The calculations show that differences in national policies against nonmember states are