The changing nature of global supply chains requires a rethinking of GSCs in the design of appropriate policy responses and in taking into account their employment and social impacts. The overall goal of RETHINK-GSC is to enhance our understanding of the impact of GSCs using new measures that can quantify the role knowledge flows, and more generally services inputs, and thus acknowledge the increasing importance of intangibles in global production. The project provides new and innovative methodologies for assessing the development of global supply chains, which generates new knowledge on ongoing and expected changes in GSCs due to shocks. The research, both theoretical and empirical, will be conducted mainly at the level of the firm – the unit that ultimately decides on the organisation of international production. Using the RETHINK-GSC innovative measures allows the projects’ researchers and future scholars (i) to investigate the interaction between tangible and intangible GSCs to evaluate the changing nature of global supply chains, (ii) to provide novel ways of analysing the impact of GSCs on social, economic and environmental outcomes in European countries and (iii) to evaluate the resilience of GSCs to exogenous shocks. Furthermore, the project elaborates policy scenarios for expected future GSC developments. This new evidence contributes to enhancing policy developments related to ensuring level playing fields in trade relations and ensuring security of strategic supplies. Throughout the project stages, researchers will collaborate closely with an Advisory Board consisting of a group of stakeholder experts from national governments, business associations, social partners and international organizations. Finally, and important to the project's continuing impact, the newly constructed measures of knowledge and service flows along GSCs will be made available to the wider community for research and policy analysis after completion of RETHINK-GSC.

International trade and investment are of considerable economic and political importance for Europe. The EU is negotiating trade agreements globally, involving the abolition of tariffs, the reduction of non-tariff barriers to trade, and the introduction of dispute settlement mechanisms. However, the example of the controversial TTIP has shown the challenges of EU trade policy. The objective of the EU Trade and Investment Policy ITN (EUTIP) is to foster interdisciplinary research into the evolving international trade policy of the EU with a view to create a significantly increased European knowledge base and research capacity on EU law and policy of the regulation of international trade through free trade agreements (FTAs) with third countries, thus helping Europe to safeguard the benefits of international trade (wealth, jobs, etc.) while addressing the challenges of its regulation (competence, democracy, accountability, environmental- and labour, standards, etc.). It is argued that the EU trade and investment policy pursued through FTAs will lead to the evolution of an entirely new legal sub-discipline closely related to and originating in EU law and international trade law. This new field of law will be wide-ranging, including aspects already addressed in existing FTAs and fields of trade and competition law currently regulated in the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU (TFEU), the relevant decision-making mechanisms, the relationship between the relevant legal systems, and dispute settlement. Moreover, the ITN investigates Transatlantic agreements as precedents and possible templates for third generation trade agreements of the EU with other parts of the world. The network is an interdisciplinary, intersectoral collaboration pooling world-leading researchers and practitioners from all relevant disciplines of law - EU constitutional, internal market, and external relations law, international trade law, and international law, as well as political science, international relations, business studies, and economics. EUTIP fully integrates non-academic Beneficiaries (Ben) and Partner Organisations (PO), including think tanks, lobbyists, regulatory bodies, law firms, US academic institutions, and an international organisation. Furthermore, the network will support and enhance the process of converting research results into policy papers through partnership with high-impact policy research units at the forefront of European policy research and policy making. The work package consists of 3 substantive work packages on (1) governance, (2) regulation, and (3) multilateralism and regionalism. 15 PhD research projects will be supervised by academics of the 11 Beneficiaries with an interdisciplinary training programme covering the legal, political and economic foundations of EU trade and investment policy and an interdisciplinary and intersectoral programme of secondments involving 18 Partner Organisations.