Mary E. Footer

The General Agreement on Trade in Services

The significance of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (“GATS”)1 cannot be overestimated. For the first time in history, this framework agreement extends multilaterally agreed commitments and rules to the area of International trade that has grown the fastest over the last fifteen years. It is estimated that the annual growth rate of exports of services during the period 1985–1999, measured on a balance-of-payments basis and primarily covering cross-border supply and consumption abroad, amounted to over nine percent per annum, while the growth in exports of goods amounted to 8.2 percent per annum.2 in fact, based on a conservative estimate, trade in services would appear to have trebled in that fifteen-year period to

An institutional and normative analysis of the World Trade Organization

1.2 trillion in 1999 and now accounts for a quarter of all cross-border trade.

Some theoretical and legal perspectives on WTO compliance

This book establishes a framework for analysis of the institutional and normative character of the WTO by locating the organization in a broader theory of international institutional law and in determining the basis for the conferral and exercise of powers in relation to its executive, legislative and adjudicative functions.

Umbrella Clauses and Widely-Formulated Arbitration Clauses: Discerning the Limits of ICSID Jurisdiction

This contribution offers some theoretical and legal perspectives on WTO compliance. It draws on current theories of compliance with international law in determining that WTO compliance is essentially norm-driven and liberal/institutionalist in character. The two key models of compliance at work in the WTO are the management model, which employs persuasive techniques in order to induce compliance, interspersed with the enforcement model with its coercive approach towards compliance. The latter model is clearly at work in the compliance decisions of the DSB, where a complainant Member may seek authorisation to impose countermeasures in the form of suspension of concessions or other obligations. Although even here a range of techniques are employed on an individual basis by the complainant and respondent parties as well as collectively by the membership in order manage the process of compliance. Thus, a range of �softer�, more persuasive, managerial techniques exist alongside coercive, enforcement ones in order to encourage compliance with WTO dispute settlement decisions and to foster normative consensus among the Members. The two models of compliance work in tandem across a broad spectrum of compliance activities and are so intertwined with one another as to form a management-enforcement ladder of compliance with WTO law. However, this ladder of compliance is less successful in accounting for some of the more egregious forms of WTO non-compliance. Instead, such non-compliance is better understood on the basis of realist (or even rationalist) theories of compliance, which may include the efficient breach theory.

The Codex Alimentarius Commission and Its Standards

This article examines the scope and the limits of ICSID arbitration involving umbrella or “observance of undertakings” clauses and widely-formulated arbitration clauses, both of which may provide investors with broad recourse to dispute settlement for disputes related to investment, as defined in the applicable bilateral investment treaty (BIT). It does so by analysing the origins and rationale behind both clauses as well as how they operate in principle and in practice. It appears there is no jurisprudence constante concerning the application of either clause. However, a clearer picture is emerging in ICSID jurisprudence of an effective, occasionally prospective, application of the umbrella clause and some limited deference to widely-formulated arbitration clauses. It is balanced by other ICSID arbitral decisions that seek to limit the scope and application of the umbrella clause on a variety of grounds.

Application of the GATT, GATS and WTO agreements to agricultural trade

• A submitted manuscript is the version of the article upon submission and before peer-review. There can be important differences between the submitted version and the official published version of record. People interested in the research are advised to contact the author for the final version of the publication, or visit the DOI to the publishers website. • The final author version and the galley proof are versions of the publication after peer review. • The final published version features the final layout of the paper including the volume, issue and page numbers.

Trade liberalization and cultural policy

ConclusionsThe foregoing is intended to serve as a basic introduction to the application of GATT GATS and the WTO Agreements to trade in agricultural products that essentially follows the pattern of trade in industrialised products, with a few exceptions.The recent experience of theFSC case on subsidies demonstrates that, despite operation of the Agreement on Agriculture there is still plenty to regulate within the parameters of rules and disciplines that apply to agricultural products in the ordinary course of trade, to the extent that interpretation of the Agreement on Agriculture is being conducted by reference to the GATT 1994 and other WTO Agreements. Similarly, we can expect that trade in agricultural products will continue to be caught by ordinary trade rules and disciplines contained in the GATT the various specialist WTO Agreements and the newer disciplines such as trade in services under the GATS. In so doing, it will contribute to our understanding of how those rules and disciplines work in practice, a good example being the recent case law pertaining to the development of a causation test under the WTO Agreement on Safeguards.