Studying trends and peculiarities of Japanese Economic partnership agreements and FTAs shows that they tend to become more complicated by scope and details. However, their utilization rate remains insufficient: less than 40 [percent. The transfer to the FTAs with country groups helps to overcome the problem of multiple rules of origin: already existing FTA with ASEAN corresponds to the situation of complicated value chains; planned EU-Japan agreement, RCEP and TPP-2 go in the same direction.

The European Union nowadays is a significant trade partner for the Latin America countries. The structure of trade between the EU and Latin America, on the one hand, explains the opportunities for strengthening the cooperation from the perspective of its complementary nature. On the other hand, there are some limitations on the diversification of their trade relations. Despite the fact that there is a number of disagreements that are reflected in the applied protectionist measures and initiated trade disputes, the EU and the Latin American region continue to develop trade relations.

In the wake of the impasse in the Doha Development Round (DDR) of multilateral trade talks, a number of countries have been looking at alternative ways to advance their trade agendas – one of which involves the negotiation of plurilateral trade agreements (PTAs). PTAs are voluntary, sector-based agreements concluded between two or more WTO member countries. Although these agreements are negotiated outside of the WTO system they have the potential to ultimately be ‘multilateralised’ and applied to the full WTO membership.

Since the beginning of the 21st century, due to the increase of emerging economies and the changes of global economic structure, some international organizations represented by the WTO have encountered many difficulties including development strategies and governance mechanisms, and many discussions in the international community on reforming their governance mechanisms and strengthening coordination and cooperation has been triggered.