Search Results

This chapter starts by demonstrating in economic terms that pharmaceutical patents result in higher prices in developing countries, thus constituting a barrier to access to medicine in those countries. It shows that this barrier is not justified under human rights law. Neither a human rights protection of inventors, nor the incentive function of patents for encouraging future research can justify patents in the developing world. The chapter then defines the term ‘conflict’ between international regimes and shows that such a conflict exists between the TRIPS Agreement and access to medicine, as an instance of a larger conflict between the WTO Agreements and international human rights law.

This chapter notes the special role of financial services in an economy and distinguishes policy reform from domestic deregulation and capital account deregulation. The impacts of policy reform and the benefits and risks of broader financial sector development, growth, income distribution, and poverty are discussed. The impacts of reform include: increased domestic competition; causing further reform and greater regulatory transparency; increased resiliency of the domestic financial system to shocks; encouragement of the diffusion of new skills, products and technologies; and facilitation of access to international capital. The elements of successful trade-policy reform are noted, based on the experiences of China, Thailand, and Latin America. Issues in need of additional research are identified, including the impact on domestic financial performance of foreign equity participation, improvement of available data on and transparency of barriers to cross-border transactions and foreign entry, measures used to moderate unanticipated impacts of liberalization, and further elucidation of the rationales for the WTO Financial Services Agreement (FSA) commitments. The role of international negotiations is addressed in terms of how they can help individual countries, what can be learned from international rules and commitments undertaken, whether there is scope for improvement, whether existing commitments promote desirable policies, possible reasons for refraining from commitments, and issues in need of further research. An addendum reviews the liberalization of financial services in the Western Hemisphere and in China.

This chapter examines the potential application of regional international law in interpreting World Trade Organization (WTO) agreements. It describes the treaty interpretation practice of WTO panels and the Appellate Body and analyses the legal basis for the reliance on norms of other sub-systems of international law and general international law for treaty interpretation in light of the Article 31(3)(c) of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT). It considers the relationship between regionalism and international law in the context of the interpretation of the WTO covered agreements.

Chapter 2 presents the underlying economic principle of the WTO—the gains from trade—and how the WTO agreement translated that principle into an international set of trade policy rules. It also focuses on the basic arguments for “free trade” and what they mean for WTO. The chapter draws conclusions that most countries recognize that trade improves their overall economic welfare, the political forces that favor trade restrictions are strong and difficult for governments to resist, and that a global trading system allows governments to overcome the political opposition to trade liberalization and to garner the gains from trade.

This chapter analyzes international harmonization of product standards and accreditation (section 1) and of food safety standards (section 2), which are conducted by different standard setting bodies and regulated by separate Agreements of the WTO. While these standards are non-binding, leaving states with discretion as to whether to adopt them in domestic regulation, the WTO Agreements have added legally binding force by mandating members to base domestic standards on harmonized ones. This change and resulting public concern regarding the legitimacy of international harmonization have led to substantive reform of standard setting procedures and of the public information policy of standard setting bodies.

WTO agreements are commonly referred to or incorporated in trade and investment agreements and investor–state arbitration. This chapter argues that a greater coherence in the application of WTO agreements within the Organization and throughout the external investment regime would be in the interests of the WTO and its Members, and also in the interests of resolving investment disputes. With a view to achieving such coherence, the WTO should play a new role as an active facilitator. A core concern might be how to provide assistance or guidance to the investment arbitral tribunals in the application and interpretation of WTO agreements. In this respect, making amicus curiae briefs or issuing preliminary rulings regarding the interpretation of the WTO agreement by the WTO Appellate Body might be helpful.

This chapter examines possible options to reconcile the goals of human rights instruments providing a right to food, and in particular food security, with WTO agreements, in particular the AoA. It starts with a brief account of the legal framework for trade in agriculture followed by a look at current agricultural trade policies and the instruments applied. It then analyses their impact on human rights, in particular the right to food. Finally, recommendations for shaping agricultural trade policies to enhance the right to food are presented.

This chapter provides a brief analysis of the enforcement tools foreseen in the WTO dispute settlement mechanism. It focuses in particular on some of the peculiarities which differentiate them from the EU legal system. As the analysis shows, the relevance of reciprocity and post-litigation negotiations between States influences the legal nature of the WTO dispute settlement system, which today remains to a large extent a mixed or hybrid system. This contrasts one of the mantras diffused in the legal scholarship immediately after the entry into force of the Uruguay Round Agreements. It also represents a vehicle for the potential fragmentation of the multilateral legal framework governing international trade, which contributes to undermining the idea of uniformity of the obligations arising under the WTO Agreements for all Members.

This chapter examines whether the competition rules in the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) are adequate or not. The competition rules in the TRIPS Agreement leave each WTO Member substantial discretion in the development and application of competition law to intellectual property rights (IPRs), including the right to forestall anti-competitive abuses of IPRs. The chapter concludes that there are no compelling grounds for changing these TRIPS rules. Both IPRs and competition rules aim at promoting innovation and general consumer welfare and should be applied in a mutually compatible manner. As a ‘down-payment’ in the Doha Development Agenda, developed WTO Members should agree to reform their competition laws such that anti-competitive conduct undertaken by their enterprises in foreign markets is no longer exempted, tolerated, or encouraged.

An increasingly important aspect of EU trade policy since the lifting of its self-imposed moratorium on preferential trade agreements (PTAs) has been the inclusion of WTO+ provisions on subsidies in bilateral agreements negotiated with a number of third countries. This article covers the main bilateral PTAs negotiated after the publication of the Commission’s Communication on ‘Global Europe’ in order to explore the implications of the different subsidy disciplines they set out. It also discusses the questions that arise when examining the legal discipline of public aid provided by such agreements, regarding not only the substantive appropriateness of standards and rules on compatibility, but also the procedural mechanisms designed to guarantee the implementation and the enforcement of such rules. It concludes that the most advanced among the EU PTAs are shaped as competition regulation and go beyond a mere negative function, ensuring that subsidies can contribute to fundamental public goals.

This chapter considers policy measures to increase the participation of SMEs in government procurement and their potential economic and social policy benefits. It considers the scale and importance of government procurement, and barriers to SME access to these markets. While some SME support policies are often considered to run counter to fundamental goals of government procurement (notably preference policies that may reduce competition and transparency), the chapter explains that many SME policies in fact support efficient and effective government procurement. It explores the synergies between such SME policies and measures designed to ensure cross-border access to government procurement markets. It considers relevant provisions in the WTO Agreement on Government Procurement and the UNCITRAL Model Law on Public Procurement, and concludes that their recent revisions to promote transparency and effectiveness in the pursuit of these policies are welcome, but that further work to ensure their effective application in practice is needed.

A study of European Union (EU) customs law is, in large measure, a study of achievement. The EU’s customs union has been described as ‘one of the most successful examples of European integration and European policy. It has served as a stable foundation for economic integration and growth in Europe for over four decades.’ The success of the Community in establishing a customs union ahead of schedule, on 1 July 1968 and deepening the union subsequently, may now be overshadowed by the more far-reaching achievements and controversies surrounding the European Monetary Union (EMU) and the area of freedom, security, and justice. The fact, though, that the European project has advanced a long way in more recent times, notwithstanding the enormous difficulties following the financial crisis which emerged in 2007, should not be allowed to disguise the truths that the European Economic Community was, as the Treaty of Rome, Article 9 said, ‘based upon a customs union’ and that without a successful economic community there would have been no European Community or European Union.

This publication analyses various constraints preventing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in developing countries from tapping into global value chains. It highlights that the time and costs associated with transporting goods across borders are significantly greater in developing than developed economies. It emphasizes that the smaller size and working capital of SMEs, and their concentration in a limited number of geographic and product markets, makes them vulnerable to costs and delays associated with trade barriers compared to multinational corporations. In this context, the chapter stresses the importance of implementing measures stipulated in the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement to enhance the ability of SMEs to import and export. These measures would increase logistical efficiency by reducing information asymmetries, simplifying regulatory requirements, and lowering fees for the movement of goods across borders. If implemented correctly, these measures would expand opportunities for developing country SMEs to embed themselves in the growing global economy.