MFN Clubs and Scheduling Additional Commitments in the GATT: Learning from the GATS

Bernard Hoekman and Petros C. Mavroidis

No 2016/06, RSCAS Working Papers from European University Institute

Abstract: Scheduling additional commitments for policies affecting trade in goods in the GATT has been plagued by two sources of ambiguity: the treatment of changes introduced unilaterally by members subsequent to an initial commitment, and the treatment of new commitments by WTO members pertaining to nontariff policy measures affecting trade in goods. This is not the case for trade in services, as the GATS makes explicit provision for additional commitments to be scheduled. Neither secondary law, in the form of decisions formally adopted by the WTO membership, nor case law has clarified the situation for trade in goods. This matter is important for the WTO as it determines the feasibility of clubs of countries agreeing to new enforceable policy disciplines that bind only signatories but are applied on a non-discriminatory basis to all WTO members. In this paper, we discuss the legal state of play and the ‘policy space’ that WTO members have to establish new MFN club-based disciplines for nontariff measures.

Keywords: Trade agreements; plurilaterals; WTO; clubs; nontariff measures. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F13 K40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://cadmus.eui.eu/bitstream/handle/1814/38665/R ... quence=1&isAllowed=y (application/pdf)
http://hdl.handle.net/1814/38665 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rsc:rsceui:2016/06

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in RSCAS Working Papers from European University Institute Convento, Via delle Fontanelle, 19, 50014 San Domenico di Fiesole (FI) Italy. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by RSCAS web unit (rscas.webunit@eui.eu).