About the WTO

The WTO Chairs Programme (WCP) became operational in 2010. It was formally launched by the WTO Director-General in May, and launching ceremonies also took place at 10 of the 14 institutions hosting WTO Chairs.

Scholars and statesmen have long debated the truth of the sentiment that John Stuart Mill expressed on the peaceful nature of commerce. Whether or not he was right, one point is clear: he was not right immediately. Precisely a century would pass between the time he penned those words and GATT’s entry into force, and the intervening years witnessed two world wars, a great many other conflicts, and the beginnings of the lengthy Cold War whose intellectual roots reached back to other writings of 1848. The association between peace and commerce nevertheless survived the turbulent nineteenth century, as an aspiration if not always a fact, and was one of the principal objectives behind what would eventually become the WTO system. This chapter covers a period that begins immediately before Mill published his Principles of Political Economy (1848) and ends with the establishment of the WTO a century and half later. The chief emphasis here is on how countries moved from theory to practice, a process in which Mill’s own land and its two former colonies in North America each played leading roles.

En 2010, l'OMC a reçu 26 nouvelles notifications, qui concernaient 18 accords commerciaux régionaux (ACR ). Sur les 484 ACR notifiés à l'OMC au 31 décembre 2010, 293 étaient en vigueur (voir la figure 11). Les ACR englobent les accords de libre-échange bilatéraux et interrégionaux.

Learning is a continuing process in one’s life. Some lessons are well archived on our “personal hard disk”, with learning by doing being the most efficient method of saving those lessons. Negotiating the TRIPS Agreement was “unforgettable”, to cite a famous American TV series. Indeed, it is one of the most well-archived and prominent learning experiences of my career. Having been born and grown up in a developing country, namely, Viet Nam (south), with its realities printed in my DNA, I came a long way, eventually working at representing a small developed country. Switzerland, which is characterized by an economy based on free enterprise, innovation and exports of manufactured goods and services, as well as by a compromise-oriented “culture” in terms of policy, law-making and negotiating, set the stage for this learning experience in the field of IP, prior, during and after the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations under the GATT.

En 2015, le Conseil général a préparé la dixième Conférence ministérielle qui allait se tenir à Nairobi et a formulé des recommandations en vue de décisions. Il a surveillé l’avancement des négociations du Cycle de Doha sur la base des rapports présentés par le Directeur général en sa qualité de Président du Comité des négociations commerciales. Il a également suivi les progrès accomplis dans la mise en oeuvre des décisions adoptées à la neuvième Conférence ministérielle, à Bali, sur la base des rapports réguliers du Président du Conseil général, Fernando de Mateo (Mexique). Le Conseil général a entendu les rapports du Directeur général sur le cinquième Examen global de l’Aide pour le commerce et sur d’autres questions comme les accessions à l’OMC.

En dépit des résultats décevants de la troisième Conférence ministérielle de l’OMC à Seattle, l’environnement commercial mondial est resté généralement sain en 1999. Il n’y a pas eu de grands revers de politique commerciale durant l’année et on n’a constaté aucun signe du retour à des politiques protectionnistes. Au contraire, plusieurs pays ont pris des mesures concrètes pour poursuivre la libéralisation de leur régime économique et commercial. Diverses initiatives autonomes et régionales prises durant l’année ont relancé la libéralisation du commerce international et l’intégration de l’économie mondiale. À l’échelon multilatéral, une grande partie des efforts ont été consacrés à la préparation de la troisième Conférence ministérielle et à l’éventuel lancement d’un nouveau cycle de négociations commerciales multilatérales. Ce dernier projet n’a pas abouti, mais on a beaucoup réduit les divergences de vues dans certains domaines importants. En même temps, l’OMC a poursuivi son programme de travail fondamental en matière de libéralisation du commerce international.

In its first report, the Appellate Body shook up 50 years of General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) pragmatism by calling for further coherence in international law when it stated that the ‘GATT cannot be read in clinical isolation from public international law’. This statement is now famous.

The WTO Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (the “TBT Agreement”) entered into force on 1 January 1995 as one of the WTO agreements under Annex 1A of the Agreement Establishing the World Trade Organization. The TBT Agreement strengthened and clarified the provisions of the "Standards Code" – the original plurilateral 1979 Tokyo Round Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade governing regulations and standards.

The WTO began life on 1 January 1995 but its trading system is half a century older. Since 1948, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) had provided the rules for the system. Whereas GATT had mainly dealt with trade in goods, the WTO and its agreements now cover trade in services, and in traded inventions, creations and designs (intellectual property).