Enforcement and Escape in the Andean Community: Why the Andean Community of Nations is Not a Replica of the European Union

Abstract: Emphasizing the presence of similar ‘supranational’ doctrines and a ‘preliminary reference’ mechanism, recent scholarship has argued that the legal institutions of the Andean Community were designed as replicas or clones of those in the European Union.
From an alternative perspective, however, focused on the importance of inter-state retaliation mechanisms, as well as trade remedies, in international trade regimes, the similarity is much less apparent. Rather, the Andean Community appears to be designed as, and in fact operates as, a treaty regime that continues to rely on enforcement and escape behaviours by states that are common to many international trade regimes, but have been persistently rejected by the EU.