Abstract
This paper reviews the World Trade Organization (WTO) Panel Report “Russia-Measures Concerning Traffic in Transit” of April 2019. It constitutes the first attempt to disentangle the legal and political aspects related to the invoked essential security interests from the economic considerations underlying the measures imposed on the transit through Russia of goods exported from Ukraine to the Republic of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. One the one hand, the Panel’s analytical framework for the interpretation of Article XXI of the GATT denied Members unilateral determination over the security exceptions. It further enables future WTO panels a pathway for reviewing possible abuses of the security exceptions, a growing concern with the rising complexity of transnational economic relations. On the other hand, our economic analysis suggests a stricter assessment of Russia’s transit restrictions was necessary to satisfy this framework. In particular, the economic analysis argues the Panel adopted a circular assessment when considering the plausibility of whether Russia implemented its measures for the protection of its essential security interests in time of emergency in international relations. Ultimately, the Panel's attention to finding a diplomatic and legal path forward failed economic scrutiny; still, a legal assessment argues that the Panel's findings fit the legal design of Article XXI:b of the GATT.
Highlights
The multilateral trading system has always accounted for the reality that Members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) would take trade restrictive actions for national security reasons
How could products tubes and pipes of tariff line (TL) 7305110004 systematically compromise national interests while those of tariff lines (TL) 7305110001 to 7305110003 and of TL 7305110008 would not?30 how could rail or tram cars for passengers be a threat to national security when their maximum operating speed lies between 140 km/h and 250 km/h, and are considered ‘inoffensive’ when they reach at least 250 km/h?
In other words, was there enough assessment done to confirm that Russia had not attempted to merely circumvent its General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) obligations? The information provided in the panel report only allow us to speculate possible reasons that could be related to higher quality of infrastructures and services, as well as enhanced security at the Ukraine–Belarus border posts
Summary
The multilateral trading system has always accounted for the reality that Members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) would take trade restrictive actions for national security reasons. It is on this premise that multilateral trade agreements contain security exceptions. The Contracting Parties of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), and later the broader group of WTO Member States, generally only relied on the GATT security exceptions on sporadic and informal occasions (Mavroidis, 2016, 481; Alford, 2011). The 2019 WTO Panel Report for Russia–Traffic in Transit is the first formal analysis of Article XXI:b(iii) of the GATT..
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
