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- Series: Elgar International Economic Law series x
Petros C. Mavroidis, Patrick A. Messerlin and Jasper M. Wauters
International Economic Law and Monetary Measures
Limitations to States’ Sovereignty and Dispute Settlement
Annamaria Viterbo
International Economic Law and the Digital Divide
A New Silk Road?
Rohan Kariyawasam
Agriculture and the WTO
Towards a New Theory of International Agricultural Trade Regulation
Fiona Smith
Reconciling Trade and Climate
How the WTO Can Help Address Climate Change
Tracey Epps and Andrew Green
Dylan Geraets
Chapter 1 explores the rationale for the creation of a multilateral trading system in the aftermath of the Second World War. It examines the efforts for the creation of an International Trade Organization (ITO) and the use of the method of Provisional Application for the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 1947 (GATT 1947) and discusses the three theories that have been used to explain the creation of the GATT. Some of the additional rules obligations negotiated in the context of WTO protocols of accession might prove to be initial attempts to address the realities posed by 21st century ‘supply-chain’ trade. This chapter introduces one of the overarching questions addressed in this book, namely whether negotiations in the context of WTO accession have sometimes been a ‘rule-making laboratory’ in which the WTO has attempted to gradually reform some of the disciplines that currently underpin the organization.
Membership of the GATT 1947 and the WTO
A Legal Analysis
Dylan Geraets
This chapter examines the process of accession to the multilateral system as formed initially by the GATT 1947 and subsequently by the WTO. The purpose of the chapter is to find an answer to the question why the process of accession remained unaltered in the course of the Uruguay Round. It will be established that, contrary to many of the other institutional features of the multilateral trading system, such as dispute settlement, the process of accession was not formally ‘legalized’. After a descriptive exercise in which the evolution of the WTO membership is provided, attention turns towards the process of accession itself. Finally, the chapter discusses negotiating efforts aimed at simplifying the WTO accession process that took place at several Ministerial Conferences.
The scope of the multilateral trading system
A Legal Analysis
Dylan Geraets
Chapter 3 examines the institutional characteristics of the WTO and the scope of the WTO Agreement. In the 1980s the Contracting Parties to the GATT 1947 realized that the rules contained in that agreement were no longer sufficient to adequately address the changing nature of international commerce. The enlarged scope of the WTO means that applicant states now also have to negotiate rules commitments that determine the way in which domestic legislation has to be amended in order to conform to the ‘baseline obligations’ laid down by the WTO Agreement. WTO Members that have acceded to the WTO have, in some instances, made commitments in their protocols of accession that exceed (or are more stringent than) these ‘baseline obligations’ as laid down in the WTO Agreement. Chapter 3 examines the WTO Agreement in order to determine the scope of these baseline obligations.
Dylan Geraets
Chapter 4 analyses the status of protocols of accession in the legal framework of the WTO. It explores theories on the enforceability of commitments that are contained in these protocols. The role of WTO protocols of accession in WTO dispute settlement proceedings is examined in detail through an analysis of the available panel and Appellate Body reports that deal with commitments contained in protocols of accession. Chapter 4 also contains an in-depth analysis of the relationship between the commitments contained in acceded Members’ protocols of accession, including the working party reports, and the provisions contained in the Marrakesh Agreement and the Multilateral Trade Agreements. It explores, inter alia, whether the general exceptions contained in Article XX of the GATT 1994 are available to justify violations of commitments contained in protocols of accession.
Dylan Geraets
Chapter 5 presents a typology that will enable an assessment of the type of commitments included in WTO protocols of accession. The chapter starts with an assessment of methodologies and typologies that have been put forward in scholarship for describing commitments in protocols of accession. A new, further refined typology is presented that will serve as the basis for the in-depth analysis of accession protocol commitments that will be presented in Chapter 6. In tandem with the presentation of the typology of accession protocol commitments, an overview is presented of which types of commitment constitute WTO-Plus obligations.