Wto Decision Making

Global Trade Law Series Volume-54 The World Trade Organization (WTO) Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU) entered into force in 1995. Since then, it has spawned an extensive body of jurisprudence, making it a highly complex system to navigate. This book provides the first in-depth practical guide to resolving a dispute at the WTO, edited by an international lawyer, who has on-hands experience in WTO litigation. Contributors of individual chapters include government officials responsible for WTO dispute settlement from developing and developed countries, WTO Secretariat officials, a former member of the Appellate Body, academics specializing in international trade and related fields, and lawyers from major law firms specializing in WTO law. Contributors explain, in a detailed manner, the numerous procedural steps and practices developed over the past twenty-five years, on: preparing for WTO litigation; recognizing the importance of WTO consultations; presenting a case before a panel; panel requests and panels’ terms of reference; the role and assistance of the WTO Secretariat; the panel process; rules of evidence; confidentiality and transparency; additional working procedures for the treatment of confidential information; legal remedies to redeem a violation; general considerations for appeal; determining the reasonable period of time for compliance; retaliation proceedings; and use of non-WTO international law. Each contributor identifies the best practices and some of them also suggest potential areas for improvement of the dispute settlement mechanism from their respective points of view. Lawyers and advisors working on WTO law and stakeholders from the private sector, civil society and academia, interested in WTO litigation, will find in one source a deeply informed description of existing dispute resolution practices (some of them previously undocumented) including the most recent jurisprudence clarifying the scope of many procedural rules. With its real-life account of WTO dispute settlement procedures and its key insights and advice from WTO insiders, this book constitutes an expert assessment of a cornerstone of the rules-based multilateral trading system and will prove of enormous value to all stakeholders in international trade.

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. The WTO is also read as an international regime in order to go beyond its formal legal and constitutional bases and to observe the Members' practice in the context of the former semi-institutionalised GATT treaty regime with which it retains strong links. WTO decision-making, which underpins and informs its institutional and normative acts, is analysed in order to better understand the dynamics of the organization. Normative developments in the WTO are reviewed from the perspective of the creation, maintenance and revision of legally binding and non-binding or 'soft' law norms, in the sense of principles, rules and standards contained in primary treaty rules, which set out the rights and obligations of the Members, and subsidiary rule-making activity by WTO bodies.

Decision-making processes are among the most important methods of functioning against which the legitimacy of one institution may be rated. It is because they show how the organization treats its members and thereby fulfils the first and minimal level of accountability. Moreover, in the recent trend of international fora, especially the WTO, decision-making by consensus has become popular. This characteristic of the WTO makes it considerably and significantly different from other international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB), where decisions are based on weighted voting. In the WTO, consensus based decision-making is popular, while voting is possible and/or mandatory only in some special cases. In voting process, each member state has one vote and therefore allowing equal status to all members irrespective of trade shares or general economic size. The principle of equality of voting status of member states is clearly seen in the formal structures of the WTO. The top body of the WTO is the Ministerial Conference, which meets every two years. The day-to-day workings of the WTO are carried out by the General Council. The General Council also meets in the guise of the Trade Policy Review Body and the Dispute Settlement Body (DSB). Below the General Council are the Councils for Goods, Services and Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), along with Committees that report directly to the General Council. Representation at all three levels is open to all members of the WTO. The provisions stipulate the use of consensus and voting in the WTO covered Agreements will be examined in the first section. The advantages and disadvantages of consensus are the core discussion in section 2. On the one hand, consensus in decision-making offers developing countries with equal voice with their developed partners irrespective of trade shares and economic sizes. On the other hand, from the viewpoint of developing countries, they have to face a lot of disadvantages deriving from the consensus based decision-making. Finally, in order to help WTO become the most democratic, efficient, transparent and legitimate organization in promoting international trade, some recommendations about the reform of the WTO in the field of decision-making are raised.

This book provides an in-depth analysis of "Mega-Regionals", the new generation of trans-regional free-trade agreements (FTAs) currently under negotiation, and their effect on the future of international economic law. The main focus centres on the EU-US Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), but the findings are also applicable to similar agreements under negotiation, such as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).The specific features of Mega-Regional Trade Agreements raise a number of issues with respect to their potential effect on the current system of international trade and investment law. These include the consequences of Mega-Regionals for the most-favoured-nation (MFN) principle, their relation to the multilateral system of the World Trade Organization (WTO), their democratic legitimacy and their interaction with existing bilateral investment treaties (BITs).The book is intended for academics and practitioners working in the field of international economic law.

Two high-level commissions—the Sutherland report in 2004, and the Warwick Commission report in 2007—addressed the future of the World Trade Organization and made proposals for incremental reform. This book goes further; it explains why institutional reform of the WTO is needed at this critical juncture in world history and provides innovative, practical proposals for modernizing the WTO to enable it to respond to the challenges of the twenty-first century. Contributors focus on five critical areas: transparency, decision- and rule-making procedures, internal management structures, participation by non-governmental organizations and civil society, and relationships with regional trade agreements. Co-published with the International Development Research Centre and the Centre for International Governance Innovation

Grounded on a series of first-hand interviews with Chinese government officials, this book examines China's accession to the World Trade Organization, providing an 'inside' look at Chinese WTO accession negotiations. Presenting a systematic political economy model in analyzing Beijing's decision-making mechanisms, the book argues that China's WTO policy making is a state-led, leadership driven, and top-down process. Feng explores how China's determined political elite partly bypassed and partly restructured a largely reluctant and resistant bureaucracy, under constant pressure from an increasingly globalized international system. By addressing China's accession to the WTO from a political analysis perspective, the book provides a theoretically informed and intriguing examination of China's foreign economic policy making regime. The book highlights contemporary debates relating to state and institutionalist theory and provides new and useful insights into a significant development of this century.

A review of the development of the WTO dispute resolution procedure and the power and influence it has gained over the practises of the member countries as well as in other international treaties.

The History and Future of the World Trade Organization is a comprehensive account of the economic, political and legal issues surrounding the creation of the WTO and its evolution. Fully illustrated with colour and black-and-white photos dating back to the early days of trade negotiations, the publication reviews the WTO's achievements as well as the challenges faced by the organisation, and identifies the key questions that WTO members need to address in the future. The book describes the intellectual roots of the trading system, membership of the WTO and the growth of the Geneva trade community, trade negotiations and the development of coalitions among the membership, and the WTO's relations with other international organisations and civil society. Also covered are the organisation's robust dispute settlement rules, the launch and evolution of the Doha Round, the rise of regional trade agreements, and the leadership and management of the WTO.