PTAs in services: Friends or foes of the multilateral trading system?

Preferential trade agreements are proliferating around the globe. By the end of July 2007 380 PTAs had been notified to the WTO. Only 142 of these agreements were concluded between 1948 and 1994 – the period from the establishment of the GATT to the end of the Uruguay Round. The remaining agreements entered into force thereafter. To put it provocatively, it could be said that, just after WTO members pledged their commitment to a non-discriminatory trading system by concluding the most far-reaching of all multilateral trading rounds, they went off to sign a plethora of discriminatory trading pacts.