The World Trade Organization

"justify">     1998 Textiles and clothing: new phase begins 1 January

     Services (emergency safeguards): results of negotiations on emergency safeguards to take effect (by 1 January 1998, deadline now March 2004)

     Rules of origin: Work programme on harmonization of rules of origin to be completed (20 July 1998)

     Government procurement: further negotiations start, for improving rules and procedures (by end of 1998)

     Dispute settlement: full review of rules and procedures (to start by end of 1998)

     1999 Intellectual property: certain exceptions to patentability and protection of plant varieties: review starts

     2000 Agriculture: negotiations start, now part of Doha Development Agenda

     Services: new round of negotiations start, now part of Doha Development Agenda

     Tariff bindings: review of definition of “principle supplier” having negotiating rights under GATT Art 28 on modifying bindings

     Intellectual property: first of two-yearly reviews of the implementation of the agreement

     2002 Textiles and clothing: new phase begins 1 January

     2005 Textiles and clothing: full integration into GATT and agreement expires 1 January

     The 15 original Uruguay Round subjects

     Tariffs 
Non-tariff barriers 
Natural resource products 
Textiles and clothing 
Agriculture 
Tropical products 
GATT articles 
Tokyo Round codes 
Anti-dumping 
Subsidies 
Intellectual property 
Investment measures 
Dispute settlement 
The GATT system 
Services.

     Abbreviations

     Some of the abbreviations and acronyms used in the WTO:

     ACP African, Caribbean and Pacific Group (Lomé Convention and Cotonu Agreement) AD, A-D Anti-dumping measures AFTA ASEAN Free Trade Area AMS Aggregate measurement of support (agriculture) APEC Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation ASEAN Association of Southeast Asian Nations ATC Agreement on Textiles and Clothing CBD Convention on Biological Diversity CCC (former) Customs Co-operation Council (now WCO) CER [Australia New Zealand] Closer Economic Relations [Trade Agreement] (also ANCERTA) COMESA Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa CTD Committee on Trade and Development CTE Committee on Trade and Environment CVD Countervailing duty (subsidies) DDA Doha Development Agenda DSB Dispute Settlement Body DSU Dispute Settlement Understanding EC European Communities EFTA European Free Trade Association EU European Union (officially European Communities in WTO) FAO Food and Agriculture Organization GATS General Agreement on Trade in Services GATT General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade GSP Generalized System of Preferences HS Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System ICITO Interim Commission for the International Trade Organization ILO International Labour Organization IMF International Monetary Fund ITC International Trade Centre ITO International Trade Organization MEA Multilateral environmental agreement MERCOSUR Southern Common Market MFA Multifibre Arrangement (replaced by ATC) MFN Most-favoured-nation MTN Multilateral trade negotiations NAFTA North American Free Trade Agreement PSE Producer subsidy equivalent (agriculture) PSI Pre-shipment inspection S&D, SDT Special and differential treatment (for developing countries) SAARC South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation SDR Special Drawing Rights (IMF) SELA Latin American Economic System SPS Sanitary and phytosanitary measures TBT Technical barriers to trade TMB Textiles Monitoring Body TNC Trade Negotiations Committee TPRB Trade Policy Review Body TPRM Trade Policy Review Mechanism TRIMs Trade-related investment measures TRIPS Trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights UN United Nations UNCTAD UN Conference on Trade and Development UNDP UN Development Programme UNEP UN Environment Programme UPOV International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants UR Uruguay Round VER Voluntary export restraint VRA Voluntary restraint agreement WCO World Customs Organization WIPO World Intellectual Property Organization WTO World Trade Organization

         Overview: a navigational guide

     The WTO agreements cover goods, services and intellectual property. They spell out the principles of liberalization, and the permitted exceptions. They include individual countries’ commitments to lower customs tariffs and other trade barriers, and to open and keep open services markets. They set procedures for settling disputes. They prescribe special treatment for developing countries. They require governments to make their trade policies transparent by notifying the WTO about laws in force and measures adopted, and through regular reports by the secretariat on countries’ trade policies.

     These agreements are often called the WTO’s trade rules, and the WTO is often described as “rules-based”, a system based on rules. But it’s important to remember that the rules are actually agreements that governments negotiated.

     This chapter focuses on the Uruguay Round agreements, which are the basis of the present WTO system. Additional work is also now underway in the WTO. This is the result of decisions taken at Ministerial Conferences, in particular the meeting in Doha, November 2001, when new negotiations and other work were launched. (More on the Doha Agenda, later.)

     The table of contents of “The Results of the Uruguay Round of Multilateral Trade Negotiations: The Legal Texts” is a daunting list of about 60 agreements, annexes, decisions and understandings. In fact, the agreements fall into a simple structure with six main parts: an umbrella agreement (the Agreement Establishing the WTO); agreements for each of the three broad areas of trade that the WTO covers (goods, services and intellectual property); dispute settlement; and reviews of governments’ trade policies.

     The agreements for the two largest areas — goods and services — share a common three-part outline, even though the detail is sometimes quite different. 

     They start with broad principles: the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) (for goods), and the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). (The third area, Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), also falls into this category although at present it has no additional parts.)

     Curbing anti-competitive licensing contracts

     The owner of a copyright, patent or other form of intellectual property right can issue a licence for someone else to produce or copy the protected trademark, work, invention, design, etc. The agreement recognizes that the terms of a licensing contract could restrict competition or impede technology transfer. It says that under certain conditions, governments have the right to take action to prevent anti-competitive licensing that abuses intellectual property rights. It also says governments must be prepared to consult each other on controlling anti-competitive licensing.

     Having intellectual property laws is not enough. They have to be enforced. This is covered in Part 3 of TRIPS. The agreement says governments have to ensure that intellectual property rights can be enforced under their laws, and that the penalties for infringement are tough enough to deter further violations. The procedures must be fair and equitable, and not unnecessarily complicated or costly. They should not entail unreasonable time-limits or unwarranted delays. People involved should be able to ask a court to review an administrative decision or to appeal a lower court’s ruling.

     The agreement describes in some detail how enforcement should be handled, including rules for obtaining evidence, provisional measures, injunctions, damages and other penalties. It says courts should have the right, under certain conditions, to order the disposal or destruction of pirated or counterfeit goods. Wilful trademark counterfeiting or copyright piracy on a commercial scale should be criminal offences. Governments should make sure that intellectual property rights owners can receive the assistance of customs authorities to prevent imports of counterfeit and pirated goods.

     Developing countries in particular, see technology transfer as part of the bargain in which they have agreed to protect intellectual property rights. The TRIPS Agreement includes a number of provisions on this. For example, it requires developed countries’ governments to provide incentives for their companies to transfer technology to least-developed countries.

     When the WTO agreements took effect on 1 January 1995, developed countries were given one year to ensure that their laws and practices conform with the TRIPS agreement. Developing countries and (under certain conditions) transition economies were given five years, until 2000. Least-developed countries have 11 years, until 2006 — now extended to 2016 for pharmaceutical patents.

     If a developing country did not provide product patent protection in a particular area of technology when the TRIPS Agreement came into force (1 January 1995), it had up to 10 years to introduce the protection. But for pharmaceutical and agricultural chemical products, the country had to accept the filing of patent applications from the beginning of the transitional period, though the patent did not need to be granted until the end of this period. If the government allowed the relevant pharmaceutical or agricultural chemical to be marketed during the transition period, it had to — subject to certain conditions — provide an exclusive marketing right for the product for five years, or until a product patent was granted, whichever was shorter.

     Subject to certain exceptions, the general rule is that obligations in the agreement apply to intellectual property rights that existed at the end of a country’s transition period as well as to new ones.

     Non-tariff barriers: red tape, etc

     A number of agreements deal with various bureaucratic or legal issues that could involve hindrances to trade.

   import licensing 
rules for the valuation of goods at customs 
preshipment inspection: further checks on imports 
rules of origin: made in ... where? 
investment measures

     Although less widely used now than in the past, import licensing systems are subject to disciplines in the WTO. The Agreement on Import Licensing Procedures says import licensing should be simple, transparent and predictable. For example, the agreement requires governments to publish sufficient information for traders to know how and why the licences are granted. It also describes how countries should notify the WTO when they introduce new import licensing procedures or change existing procedures. The agreement offers guidance on how governments should assess applications for licences.

     Some licences are issued automatically if certain conditions are met. The agreement sets criteria for automatic licensing so that the procedures used do not restrict trade.

     Other licences are not issued automatically. Here, the agreement tries to minimize the importers’ burden in applying for licences, so that the administrative work does not in itself restrict or distort imports. The agreement says the agencies handling licensing should not normally take more than 30 days to deal with an application — 60 days when all applications are considered at the same time.

     For importers, the process of estimating the value of a product at customs presents problems that can be just as serious as the actual duty rate charged. The WTO agreement on customs valuation aims for a fair, uniform and neutral system for the valuation of goods for customs purposes — a system that conforms to commercial realities, and which outlaws the use of arbitrary or fictitious customs values. The agreement provides a set of valuation rules, expanding and giving greater precision to the provisions on customs valuation in the original GATT.

     The Trade-Related Investment Measures (TRIMs) Agreement applies only to measures that affect trade in goods. It recognizes that certain measures can restrict and distort trade, and states that no member shall apply any measure that discriminates against foreigners or foreign products (i.e. violates “national treatment” principles in GATT). It also outlaws investment measures that lead to restrictions in quantities (violating another principle in GATT). An illustrative list of TRIMs agreed to be inconsistent with these GATT articles is appended to the agreement. The list includes measures which require particular levels of local procurement by an enterprise (“local content requirements”). It also discourages measures which limit a company’s imports or set targets for the company to export (“trade balancing requirements”).

     Under the agreement, countries must inform fellow-members through the WTO of all investment measures that do not conform with the agreement. Developed countries had to eliminate these in two years (by the end of 1996); developing countries had five years (to the end of 1999); and least-developed countries seven. In July 2001, the Goods Council agreed to extend this transition period for a number of requesting developing countries.

     The agreement establishes a Committee on TRIMs to monitor the implementation of these commitments. The agreement also says that WTO members should consider, by 1 January 2000, whether there should also be provisions on investment policy and competition policy. This discussion is now part of the Doha Development Agenda.

     The WTO’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), negotiated in the 1986-94 Uruguay Round, introduced intellectual property rules into the multilateral trading system for the first time.

     Ideas and knowledge are an increasingly important part of trade. Most of the value of new medicines and other high technology products lies in the amount of invention, innovation, research, design and testing involved. Films, music recordings, books, computer software and on-line services are bought and sold because of the information and creativity they contain, not usually because of the plastic, metal or paper used to make them. Many products that used to be traded as low-technology goods or commodities now contain a higher proportion of invention and design in their value — for example brandnamed clothing or new varieties of plants.

     Creators can be given the right to prevent others from using their inventions, designs or other creations — and to use that right to negotiate payment in return for others using them. These are “intellectual property rights”. They take a number of forms. For example books, paintings and films come under copyright; inventions can be patented; brandnames and product logos can be registered as trademarks; and so on. Governments and parliaments have given creators these rights as an incentive to produce ideas that will benefit society as a whole.

     The extent of protection and enforcement of these rights varied widely around the world; and as intellectual property became more important in trade, these differences became a source of tension in international economic relations. New internationally-agreed trade rules for intellectual property rights were seen as a way to introduce more order and predictability, and for disputes to be settled more systematically. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

      5 Текст перевода

     Всемирная торговая организация (ВТО) является единственной глобальной международной организацией, регулирующей правила торговли между  нациями. В основе ее деятельности лежат  соглашения ВТО, заключенные и подписанные  большей частью стран - участниц мировой торговли и ратифицированные в парламентах этих стран. Цель организации состоит в содействии производителям товаров и услуг, экспортерам, и импортерам вести бизнес. Среди различных функций ВТО следующие выделяются аналитиками, как наиболее важные:

        1. Наблюдение за ведением, управлением  и исполнением заключенных соглашений.

     2. Обеспечение условий для переговоров  и урегулирование споров.

     3. Также, обязанностью ВТО является  рассмотрение и внедрение национальной  торговой политики, гарантирование ее последовательности и прозрачности, путем наблюдения за глобальной экономической средой, и  выработке тактики. Приоритет ВТО - помощь развитию отсталым странам и странам с низким доходом в переходном периоде приспособиться к правилам ВТО и дисциплинам путем технического сотрудничества и обучения. ВТО - также центр экономического исследования и анализа: регулярные оценки глобальной торговой конъюнктуры в ее ежегодных публикациях и отчетах о научно-исследовательской работе по определенным темам реализуются организацией. Наконец, ВТО близко сотрудничает с двумя другими институтами Бреттон-Вуддской системы, Международным Валютным Фондом и группой Всемирного банка.

       МЭС (международное экономическое  сотрудничество) и ГАТТ 1947. Гарри  Декстер Уайт и Джон Мейнард Кейнс на Бреттон-Вуддской Конференции (оба экономиста вступали в защиту мировой либерализации),  рекомендовали учредить следующие институты: Международный валютный фонд (финансовый и денежно-кредитный институт), Всемирный банк (финансовый и структурный институт), и МЭК (международное экономическое сотрудничество). Предшественник ВТО, Генеральное соглашение по тарифам и торговле (ГАТТ), был основан после Второй мировой войны вслед за другими новыми многосторонними учреждениями, посвященными международному экономическому сотрудничеству, - учреждениями Бреттон-Вуддской системы, известными как Всемирный банк и Международный валютный фонд. Также была достигнута договоренность о создании международного учреждения торговли – Международная торговая организация. Международная торговая организация должна была существовать как специализированное агентство в рамках Организации Объединенных Наций, регулирующая не только торговые барьеры, но и другие проблемы, косвенно связанные с торговлей, включая занятость населения, инвестиции, практику деловых отношений, и товарные соглашения. Создание МТО не было одобрено Соединенными Штатами и некоторыми другими странами, и никогда не вступало в силу. В отсутствие международной организации по торговле ГАТТ за эти годы "преобразовало бы себя" в фактически действующую международную организацию.

       Критика ВТО. Столкновение протестующих  с Гонконгской полицией в Ван  Чай (побережье) во время Министерской  Конференции Всемирной торговой  организации в 2005 году. Цель ВТО  состоит в обеспечении свободной торговли и стимулировании экономического роста. Критики утверждают, что свободная торговля приводит к расхождению в уровнях доходов богатых и бедных стран (богатые становятся более богатыми, а бедные становятся более бедными). Мартин Кнор, Директор сотрудничества стран Третьего мира, утверждает, что ВТО не управляет мировой экономикой беспристрастно, в ее деятельности имеет  место систематический уклон к богатым странам и многонациональным корпорациям при проведении переговоров, что, в свою очередь, вредит менее развитым странам, у которых имеется малое количество голосов. Он утверждает, что развивающиеся страны не извлекли выгоду из соглашений ВТО Уругвайского раунда, потому что, например, доступ к рынку промышленности не улучшился; эти страны не получили никакой прибыли согласно соглашению о текстильных долях; нетарифные барьеры, такие как антидемпинговые меры возросли; внутренняя поддержка и экспортные субсидии для сельскохозяйственных продуктов в богатых странах остаются высокими. Джадиж Бавати утверждает, однако, что существует тарифная защита производителей в бедных странах, с которой сталкиваются богатые страны в случае применения антидемпинговых процедур. Другие критики утверждают, что проблемы трудовых отношений и окружающей среды никаким образом не регулируются в рамках ВТО. Стив Шарновиц, экс- директор Института исследования глобальной окружающей среды и Торговли (ИИГОСИТ), полагает, что ВТО "должна начать рассматривать связь между торговлей и трудовыми и экологическими проблемами." Профсоюзы осуждают качество трудовых прав развивающихся стран, утверждая, что, ВТО преуспевает при продвижении глобализации, но в то же время окружающая среда и трудовые права страдают в равной мере. С другой стороны, Кор отвечает, что, "если бы окружающая среда и рабочая сила должны были войти в систему содействия ВТО [...], было бы концептуально трудно спорить, почему другие социальные и культурные проблемы не должны также войти в ее компетенцию.". Бавати считает "лоббирование богатыми странами,  при рассмотрении ими внеторговых повесток дня по торговым соглашениям." Таким образом, и Бавати, и Арвин Панагария из Университета Колумбии, критиковали введение ТРИПС в структуру ВТО, боясь, что такие неторговые повестки дня могли бы навредить выполнению главной функции организации. Другие критики характеризовали принятие решений в ВТО как сложный, неэффективный, нетипичный процесс, поэтому они предложили учреждение небольшого, неофициального руководящего комитета ("консультативное управление"), который может обладать делегированной ответственностью за урегулирование отношений по торговым проблемам среди государств - членов. Сотрудническтво стран Третьего мира назвало ВТО "самой непрозрачной из международных организаций", потому что "большинство развивающихся стран имеет небольшое право голоса в системе ВТО"; также они подчеркивают, что «гражданское общество» обязано давать группам и учреждениям подлинные возможности выразить их взгляды и повлиять на результат политики и решений." Некоторые неправительственные организации, такие как Мировое Федералистское Движение, утверждают, что демократическое участие в ВТО могло быть реализовано через создание парламентского собрания, хотя другие аналитики характеризовали это предложение как неэффективное.