WTO accessions

Over the past seven decades, since the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was established in 1947, there has been a phenomenal increase in international trade in goods, largely due to sustained efforts by the world’s main trading nations to reduce and eliminate tariff barriers in a multilaterally orchestrated manner. This publication reviews how the procedures and practices relating to tariff negotiations and renegotiations have evolved ov Read More

Twenty-first century Africa is in a process of economic transformation, but challenges remain in areas such as structural reform, governance, commodity pricing and geopolitics. This book looks into key questions facing the continent, such as how Africa can achieve deeper integration into the rules-based multilateral trading system and the global economy. It provides a range of perspectives on the future of the multilateral trading system and Africa' Read More

The Handbook provides the first detailed explanation and analysis of the process whereby governments become Members of the WTO. The WTO Agreement, which came into force on 1 January, 1995, provides few details on how this process is to take place. Consequently, the steps in the detailed negotiations leading up to access have evolved through the actual negotiations for governments which have become Members of the WTO since 1995. This ha Read More

This chapter evaluates the impact on competitiveness of reforms undertaken by recently acceded countries and draws lessons for African countries pursuing the goal of becoming emerging economies. By comparing reform outcomes before and after accessions relative to control groups using the difference-in-difference evaluation method, the chapter concludes that the recently acceded members improved their international competitiveness, although t Read More

Energy issues have not been systematically discussed by WTO members in the multilateral trading system. This is owing to the fact that there is no rule on energy per se in WTO agreements. Yet all tradable energy goods and services are covered by the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 1994 and the General Agreement on Trade in Services respectively. With energy security and climate change high on the global agenda, there is increasing inter Read More

What is the perspective from the podium? what are the challenges that face the chairperson of an accession working party? The role of a chairperson of an accession working party is tough and challenging, and the functions of a chairperson can only be successfully exercised if he or she has the trust and confidence of parties involved. This role is best understood as that of a referee, assisted by the Secretariat. The accession of the Russian Federati Read More

This Handbook is intended for readers wanting detailed information on the process of accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO). It will be of practical use to people involved in one way or another with the process and with the negotiations on accession to the World Trade Organization. The Handbook provides the general reader with a basis for informed discussion and analysis of the WTO’s membership process. It first places accession in the co Read More

Accession to the WTO is a complex process and all acceding governments need expert advice to master the WTO rules and obligations, the procedures governing the accession negotiations, the demands that the process makes of them and how to respond to these demands. Applicants are also ipso facto participants in the negotiations under the Doha Development Agenda and need to keep abreast of the issues being dealt with there, as they will be Read More

This volume, the work of more than twenty authors, grew out of the Fourth China Round Table and the WTO’s Tenth Ministerial Conference, two seminal events held back-to-back in Nairobi, Kenya, in December 2015. The work presented here provides comprehensive, substantive insights of the African trade policy and development context in which these two meetings took place.

Tajikistan was part of the Great Silk Road, a system of caravan routes connecting Eurasian countries between the second century BC and the fifteenth century AD. The development of trade throughout Central Asia encouraged the people of this region to adapt to the demands and requirements of consumers thousands of kilometres away, both in western Europe and in China. Tajikistan’s principal rationale for seeking WTO membership was t Read More

The book you are about to close picked up on the evolving discussion on accessions and trade multilateralism. The first book on the subject, WTO Accessions and Trade Multilateralism: Case Studies and Lessons from the WTO at Twenty, looked back. It took stock of two decades of accessions to the WTO, their welfare and development outcomes, the resulting improvements to market access, and their contribution to domestic reforms and to the rules-ba Read More

Foreign direct investment and trade are increasingly interlinked due to the deepening integration of trade and production networks. Today, there is an ever-increasing percentage of imports in a country’s production. Responding to this increase, some countries have sought to limit the percentage of imports in their production by requiring that foreign investors use locally produced inputs, as an aspect of implementing priorities in development plans and/ Read More

The obstacles to deeper African integration are great, but the potential gains for development and poverty reduction warrant a sustained effort to overcome these challenges. High trade barriers between countries have been reflected in trade that is more oriented toward distant markets than neighbouring African countries – it is often easier for Africans to trade with the rest of the world than with each other. The potential exists for greater intra-African trade Read More

African trade is heavily concentrated in agricultural and natural resourcebased commodities, sectors that are highly embedded in international value chains. There has been significant trade dynamism in recent years, driven by greater participation by African firms and communities in value chains, especially in products like fresh produce and flowers. Much of this trade and production is for end markets in Europe, but there is also increasing trade of this t Read More

When Lao PDR applied for membership of the WTO in 1997, it used the WTO accession process as a tool to implement its decision to establish a market economy and fully integrate into the world economy. Although at the outset market access was not considered to be the principal benefit to be derived from WTO accession, Lao PDR was aware that WTO membership would give its economy additional security and predictability. WTO accession negotiati Read More

WTO obligations, including notification requirements, and specific accession commitments are complex. Most of them become effective from the date of WTO membership. From a centralized accession process, new members now suddenly have to adapt to a decentralized WTO procedures and participate in parallel in its multiple bodies. The twenty years of post-accession experience of Article XII members suggests that many, especially least-develope Read More

This chapter takes stock of the recent academic literature on accessions. It focuses only on the analytical work published since 2000 in books, academic journals and working papers by key WTO scholars across the world. These contributions are related to the procedural, legal, economic and institutional aspects of WTO accessions, and to the proposals for their reform. Country-specific studies, research on the impact of accessions on individual ind Read More

The working party on the accession of Russia was the biggest and longest in WTO accession history. A big power that decides to join an international organisation, even if this is the WTO, cannot avoid political burdens. No big country can stay apart from world politics. The WTO accession process is tough, demanding and complex, with no clear rules. This raises questions about length, fairness and lack of procedural clarity. Yet it is risky to stay outsid Read More

Trade multilateralism in the twenty-first century faces a serious test as weakness in the global economy and fast-paced technological changes create a challenging environment for world trade. This book examines how an updated and robust rules-based multilateral framework, anchored in the WTO, remains indispensable to maximizing the benefits of global economic integration and to reviving world trade. By examining recent accessions to the WTO, i Read More

Trade facilitation is central to Africa’s competitiveness in the global economy. Costs related to trade facilitation make up a significant proportion of overall trade-related costs, which in Africa are higher than in any other developing region. This acts as a barrier for the integration of African countries into global markets, as well as greater intra-African integration. Improving trade facilitation is essential for lowering costs for African agricultural producers as Read More

Since the establishment of the WTO on 1 January 1995, no less than 23 States and separate customs territories have joined the multilateral trading system through the procedures of Article XII of the Marrakesh Agreement. These represent a range of economies, from global players to important emerging and transition economies and least-developed countries. A relatively large number are at various stages of the accession process. A certain limited nu Read More

This guide has been prepared to assist public understanding of the process of accession to the WTO. The WTO Ministerial Conference and the General Council have the exclusive right to adopt interpretations of the Marrakesh Agreement Establishing the WTO and its Multilateral Trade Agreements. This guide is not intended to, and does not provide, a legal interpretation of WTO provisions.

Accessions to the World Trade Organization (WTO) generate large amounts of data accumulated during accession negotiations and subsequent domestic reforms. Owing to differences in the structure of acceding economies, accession commitments vary across recently acceded, or Article XII, members, in the number of tariff lines bound, the level of bindings and the various accession-specific commitments and obligations. The depth of commitments an Read More

In July 2012, the WTO General Council agreed on a set of new and improved guidelines to facilitate and accelerate negotiations on the accession to the WTO of least-developed countries (LDCs). The process of acceding to the WTO is complex, time-consuming and resource-intensive for candidate countries, and for LDCs, which have limited institutional and administrative capacity, in particular. The WTO accession process is very much a political process, and r Read More

A core objective of accession results is to establish a legal foundation for the conduct and management of trade policy based on the rule of law. Implementation of accession commitments hinges on the existence of an effective domestic framework for making and enforcing policies. Customarily, this is described in the third chapter of working party reports. Twenty-eight of the members that acceded pursuant to procedures in Article XII of the Mar Read More

This chapter focuses, pursuant to Article XII accession-specific commitments, on the evolving disciplines on export duties, distinguished from the broader setting of export restrictions. From a rules angle, export duties were not subject to disciplines, in contrast to import duties that have, classically, been bound in schedules of concessions and commitments on goods since GATT 1947. Pursuant to Article XI:1 of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade ( Read More

Although the private sector is not, in most cases, directly involved in negotiations for accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), its needs and positions are addressed through consultative mechanisms organized at the national level by WTO members. These mechanisms represent a two-way information channel: the relevant authorities can obtain the foundations to formulate and defend national negotiating positions, while the private s Read More

The economy of Chinese Taipei has always been highly dependent on trade. Nevertheless, its WTO accession negotiations were demanding – although the results have been significant and beneficial – involving a total of eleven formal meetings and five informal meetings for the working party, and approximately 200 bilateral meetings between Chinese Taipei and thirty different WTO members. The gradual opening of Chinese Taipei’s market exposed domes Read More

Ukraine embarked on its road to WTO accession in 1992, a year after it had declared its independence. Fourteen years of intense work, steep learning, persistence, political will and flexibility were to follow. Ukraine faced many immediate challenges and tasks in strengthening its independence and creating and establishing the national institutions required by an independent state, moving away from a centralised economy and reinforcing foreign polic Read More

Accessions to the World Trade Organization (WTO) have profound implications for the private sector. The market liberalization required by accession commitments must be accompanied by deep structural reforms. Even though least-developed countries (LDCs) and developing countries usually benefit from special and differential treatment, the liberalization process can still lead to market adjustments that can test the status quo and require actions th Read More

Trade multilateralism, i.e. global trade based on negotiated and agreed rules by the World Trade Organization (WTO) membership, faces various challenges. Slow economic growth, changes in the balance of global economic power and inequitable distribution of growth benefits have called into question the benefits of globalization and the rules-based global order. Trade has been the target of a barrage of criticism from many quarters and has becom Read More

Industrialization is one of the cardinal priorities for economies in dynamic transformation from a commodity base to a diversified value-added development stage. In major African economies, as in other economies worldwide, industrial policy is resurgent and back at the centre of economic policy. The sectors in focus revolve around manufacturing, textiles and clothing, footwear, automobiles, infrastructure, information technology products, petrochemical Read More

Long proposed in aspirational terms, good governance has increasingly become a subject of substantive global policy debate and international rule-making. An analysis of recent negotiating exercises, such as World Trade Organization (WTO) accession protocols and the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA), shows that governance has been discussed among WTO members and embedded in WTO rules. This chapter first examines how WTO accession p Read More

Cambodia was the first least-developed country to complete negotiations to become a member of the WTO. Its negotiations took place in the context of the Decision on LDC accessions taken by the WTO General Council in December 2002, in which WTO members agreed that they would be bound by certain restraints in dealing with LDCs seeking to join the WTO. Given the constraints that, as an LDC, it faced when entering the negotiations, Cambodia r Read More

Morocco’s membership of the GATT and WTO has been part of an overall strategy of the Government of the Kingdom of Morocco, at the instigation of the late King Hassan II, to introduce a package of institutional and socio-economic reforms, which sought mainly to modify and diversify the structure of the national economy, optimize the allocation of its resources and ensure its integration into the world economy. Being a Member of the Multilateral Tr Read More

This chapter proposes a holistic framework by which acceding governments may evaluate the macroeconomic impact of joining the WTO. Because both acceding governments and WTO members are interested in preserving their own systemic stability and the stability of the multilateral trading system, evaluation of the Accession Package can be achieved by examining its impact on the domestic and external stability of the acceding country. The Read More

Important synergies and complementarities exist between trade liberalization initiatives and the application of measures to suppress anti-competitive practices or arrangements. Both anti-competitive practices of firms and state-orchestrated arrangements that restrict competition can undermine the gains from trade in myriad ways. Moreover, trade liberalization can be a powerful tool for addressing competition policy concerns. Whether there is a n Read More

A strong multilateral trading system is vital to developing countries’ longterm interests both for its rulebook and for the market access that it guarantees in all key markets. Markets are increasingly located in developing countries. Indeed, for the first time in recent history, South–South trade outweighs North–South trade, even though barriers to South–South trade are much more significant than those to developed countries’ markets. Through their WTO acce Read More

This book provides multiple perspectives on the process and results from WTO accession negotiations. The perspectives reflected are those of economists, lawyers, academics, chief negotiators of selected original WTO members and Article XII members, chairpersons of WTO accession working parties, professionals from the multilateral institutions of the WTO, World Bank, International Monetary Fund and International Trade Centre. Analysis is co Read More

Lesotho is a landlocked, least-developed economy and a member of the Southern African Customs Union (SACU), the oldest customs union (CU) in the global economy. Forty per cent of the population lives under the poverty line. The economic base is narrow, reliant on the textiles and apparel industry (for 59 per cent of total exports), subsistence agriculture, remittances, regional customs revenue and a degree of manufacturing. The apparel industry and a Read More

While Africa’s share of global value-added trade has increased significantly during the past 20 years, connecting African small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to value chains and turning the support for greater intra-African trade into a reality remains challenging. Ensuring that the trade discourse is fully integrated into this development story is critical and countries, especially those that have recently acceded, have to be supported to recognise an Read More

Trade can be a powerful engine for development. But harnessing trade for development in Africa requires investment to foster lasting economic transformation. Investment, therefore, is key to unlocking the potential of trade-led growth. While flows of foreign direct investment (FDI) into Africa paint a familiar picture of the dominance of extractive industries, the reality is more nuanced and promising. The fact that FDI stocks in Africa are geared Read More

What is the role of the chairperson of a working party? What instruments can he or she use to manage the complexities of the WTO accession process? Typically, WTO accession negotiations are time consuming because of extensive domestic legislative and institutional reforms, which need to be aligned with economic development strategies. These reforms focus on the tough questions of eliminating trade barriers, improving governance, tackling corr Read More