Scope/need for strengthening WTO rules, especially regarding, dispute settlement,institutional issues and functioning of the system in a globalising world

Abstract

Introduction: Twenty years ago, while I was writing my doctoral thesis on voluntary export restraints and Article XX GATT, I applied for an internship with the GATT Secretariat. At that time the GATT Secretariat was a body with few lawyers and many economists. Law did not matter that much; indeed it was difficult for a young lawyer to get accepted as a “stagiare”. I insisted and eventually was accepted. Two years later, while studying with John Jackson I learned about the difference between power and rule-oriented diplomacy. GATT’s reliance on diplomacy did function reasonably well, even without a legal mechanism, yet there were spectacular cases of non-compliance and the system was always prone to “blackmail”. Compared to GATT, the WTO has come a long way. Nobody would have imagined at the start of the Uruguay Round that the result of the negotiations would be a World Trade Organisation with a binding dispute settlement mechanism. We went from a power-oriented to a rule-oriented system, which until now dealt reasonably well with more than 270 dispute settlement cases. Still, there are challenges to the system of which I would like to address four: Rulemaking versus Jurisprudence; Dispute Settlement; Avoidance Implementation; Dispute Settlement Reform