Legal basis for a dispute

4.3 Types of dispute in the other multilateral agreements on trade in goods

As stated above, most of the multilateral agreements on trade in goods (which are contained in Annex 1A of the WTO Agreement) other than GATT 1994 include an express reference to Articles XXII and XXIII of GATT or paraphrase the criteria contained therein. In those cases, the requirements and options for a complaint are the same as discussed above. Minor adaptations are of course necessary because, for instance, the failure to carry out an obligation under the agreement then refers to the respective agreement, not to GATT 1994. Similarly, the benefit must be one accruing under that agreement. Accordingly, the following section will only highlight the instances in which there are departures from what was explained in the context of GATT 1994.

The SCM Agreement also refers to Articles XXII and XXIII of GATT 1994 (Article 30). However, in Article 4, it specifically provides otherwise in relation to the prohibited subsidies as defined in Article 3 (export subsidies and import substitution subsidies) by not requiring any claim of nullification or impairment of a benefit. As a consequence, Article 3.8 of the DSU is not applicable.¹

Notes:

1. Not in the sense that there is no presumption of nullification or impairment, but in the sense that there is no nullification or impairment that needs to be presumed.  back to text