Who Wants What? - Final Offer Arbitration in the World Trade Organization

Abstract

The World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU) favours negotiated settlements for disputes. However, arbitrations according to Article 22.6 of the DSU have been carried out as compulsory conventional arbitrations, even though such arbitrations do not offer strong incentives for the parties to reach a settlement. For quite some time, scholars have studied other forms of arbitration that may encourage settlements more strongly, such as final offer arbitration. Yet this form of arbitration has received rather limited attention in the academic discussion about dispute settlement under the WTO. This article explores to what extent final offer arbitration might make sense for settling WTO disputes and concludes that it would be suitable for arbitrations pursuant to Article 22.6 of the DSU, specifically for setting the level of suspension of obligations and, under certain circumstances, for deciding on so-called cross-retaliation pursuant to Article 22.3 of the DSU. Before negotiations start, parties to a dispute should agree on final offer arbitration if arbitration should be deemed necessary. Such an agreement might be expressed in a pre-emptive joint proposal on procedural aspects. Amendment of the DSU would then be unnecessary.