The Fourth Ministerial Conference in Doha marked a further step in
promoting the objective of a multilateral trading system based on
non-discrimination and rejection of protectionist practices, with
emphasis on its development dimension. Members committed themselves to
achieve these principles and objectives through global trade
rule-making and liberalization in the WTO framework.
At
Doha, WTO Members also recognized that regional trade agreements (RTAs)
can play an important role in promoting trade liberalization and in
fostering economic development. In initiating negotiations to clarify
and improve RTA-related disciplines and procedures, taking into
account developmental aspects, Ministers highlighted the need for a
harmonious relationship between the multilateral and regional
processes.
The
time is ripe for the WTO Membership to review such relationship
afresh. WTO provisions entitle Members to conclude RTAs under certain
conditions, of both a substantive and procedural nature. Though many
of the issues at stake have been inherited from the GATT years,
controversy nurtured by the language of the existing legal yardsticks
has been a central element in the work of the Committee on Regional
Trade Agreements (CRTA), since its establishment in 1996. As a result,
the CRTA has been unable to deliver any assessment on the
consistency of individual RTAs notified to the WTO with the
corresponding provisions and has only partially fulfilled its
transparency role.
This
represents an important challenge for the WTO, in particular at a time
when nearly all Members are engaged in RTAs or actively pursuing the
regional road. Clearer and more coherent principles and guidelines are
required to channel the growing level of Members' involvement in RTAs,
and to harmonize trade policy-making at the multilateral and regional
level.
The
Seminar was designed to assist Members in shaping the conceptual
framework for the Doha negotiations in this area. In particular, it
aimed at raising awareness on the meaning and significance of RTAs for
world trade; and on the impact of RTAs’ market access provisions and
trade regulatory functions. It also provided for an exchange of views
about how better to ensure the coherence of regional and multilateral
trade initiatives so as to minimize any distorting effects on
international trade relations; and about how better to use the WTO
institutional framework, in particular the CRTA, to achieve that aim.
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