The Uruguay Round marked only a first step in a longer-term process of
services liberalization within a multilateral framework. The importance
of the Round lay less in its improving actual market conditions, but in
creating a completely new system of rules and disciplines for future trade
liberalization. This may also explain why the GATS, in Article XIX:1,
already provides for a new round of services negotiations to start not
later than five years from the date of entry into force of the Agreement.
Consequently,
a new services round was launched in January 2000. It aims to achieve
a progressively higher level of liberalization of services trade while
“promoting the interests of all participants on a mutually advantageous
basis and securing an overall balance of rights and obligations” (Article XIX:1).
Although the Seattle Ministerial Conference in late November 1999 failed
to agree on launching a larger trade round, the mandate to negotiate on
services was never put into doubt. Contrasting from preparatory stages
of the Uruguay Round, Members’ focus was no longer on whether, but on
how to promote services liberalization within the multilateral system.
As a first step in 2000, and as part
of an information exchange programme mandated at the Singapore Ministerial
Conference, the WTO Secretariat prepared a series of background papers
on major services sectors (available on the WTO Website) to stimulate
policy discussion and promote dissemination of relevant information among
Members. In March 2001, the Council for Trade in Services adopted Guidelines
and Procedures for the Services Negotiations (document S/L/93,
(2 pages, 32KB)) as provided for in Article XIX:3.
Major elements include
a reaffirmation of the right to regulate and to introduce new regulations
on the supply of services; the objective of increasing participation of
developing countries in services trade; and the preservation of the existing
structure and principles of the GATS, including the listing of sectors
in which commitments are made and the four modes of supply. Certain new
elements have been added, such as explicit recognition of the needs of
small and medium-sized service suppliers; reference to the request-offer
approach as the main method of negotiation; and continuation of the assessment
of trade in services, mandated under Article XIX:3, as an ongoing activity of the Council for Trade
in Services.
The Negotiating
Guidelines further provide that the rule-making negotiations inherited
from the Uruguay Round (‘built-in agenda’) in the areas of subsidies,
government procurement and domestic regulation be concluded prior to the
completion of the negotiations on specific commitments (Chapter IV:2).
The negotiations on safeguards under Article X
were made subject to an earlier deadline (15 March 2002), which has since
been revised. A Decision by the Council for Trade in Services of March 2004 now provides that, subject to the outcome of the negotiating mandate in Article X:1, the results shall enter into force not later than the results of the current round of services negotiations.
In November 2001, the Ministerial Conference in Doha agreed on a comprehensive negotiating agenda which is to be concluded by 1 January 2005. The various negotiating mandates
— on agriculture, services, “traditional” market access issues, WTO rules, trade and environment, etc.
— form part of a “single undertaking” (paragraph 47). It is implemented under the authority of a Trade Negotiations Committee (TNC) which reports to the General Council.
The Ministerial Declaration confirms the Services Negotiating Guidelines of March 2001 and places them into the overall timeframe of the Doha Development Agenda. Initial requests for new or improved services commitments were to be submitted by 30 June 2002, with initial offers being due by 31 March 2003.
The importance of the Declaration for services goes, however, beyond its embracing the Negotiating Guidelines of 2001. This is for at least two reasons. First, the success of the Doha Conference and its integration of services into a wider negotiating context testifies to the resilience of the multilateral framework and provides an important political boost. Second, the Declaration provides for negotiations in areas beyond those addressed in the Guidelines. Cases in point are a mandate to negotiate the removal or reduction of trade barriers on environmental goods and services, and a commitment to commence negotiations, after the Fifth Ministerial Conference (scheduled for November 2003), on the interaction between trade and competition policy and on transparency in government procurement. The work programme on electronic commerce, launched by the Geneva Ministerial Conference in 1998, is to continue under the aegis of the General Council.
