New Institutional Architectures and Substantive Rules in International Economic Law - The EU and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Particularly since the late 1980s, International Economic Law (IEL) has been characterized by the growing pressure to be interpreted and applied, as well as redesigned and updated, as a major driver of sustainability, promoting equitable liberalization and protection of international trade and foreign investments. Within the perspective of a very ambitious UN 2030 Agenda, new international substantive and institutional rules have been discussed, and sometimes agreed on, to shape trade and investment agreements, and unilateral measures have been adopted to pursue sustainability targets when common understandings were not possible to achieve. Within this already very demanding context, first economic clashes started to arise -and explode- in particular between the United States and China; and, subsequently, the inability to find diplomatic solutions to overcome geopolitical tensions has resulted in highly thorny conflicts, putting further strain on global economic governance.