The General Agreement on Trade in Services: Taking Stock and Moving Forward

Abstract

The basic premise of this article is that GATS negotiations are moving along a completely different track and time frame to the other WTO subject matter, which forms part of the Doha Round, and are best considered as part of a work-in-progress. This article identifies some of the key conceptual, methodological and systemic issues that WTO Members face in negotiating on trade in services. These include the fact that the template for trade in goods is conceptually ill suited to the development of trade in services and gives rise to problems of market access and the scheduling of services' commitments as well as the phasing out of MFN exemptions. From a methodological point of view, there is a dearth of adequate information on services combined with the unresolved issues of classification and scheduling of specific and horizontal commitments. Moreover, negotiations on trade in services are made more difficult by the need for Members to give effect to measures of autonomous liberalisation. Finally, Members are faced with systemic issues because they must continue to work on ongoing built-in agenda items such as domestic regulation, the development of additional GATS rules and the negotiation of new sectoral annexes or review of existing ones, without which the results of negotiations cannot be fully appreciated.