General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT)
The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) is an international treaty concluded in 1947 by its 23 founding members, including the U.S., the United Kingdom and Chile. Germany acceded to the system of agreements in 1951. The aim of the GATT is to orient the trade and economic relations of the contracting parties to improved standards of living and full employment, to keep boosting the level of real incomes and demand, to develop the full use of the resources of the world, and to boost output.
In order to attain these goals, the contracting parties agreed to reduce tariffs and other barriers in international trade, to simplify the import and export of goods, and to establish a process to resolve conflicts.
General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS)
The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) entered into force on 1 January 1995 and is the first multilateral agreement on ongoing liberalisation of international trade in services. It basically covers all areas of services (e.g. financial services, telecommunications, tourism), apart from services provided by the state and services related to air transport.
The GATS permits the WTO members to undertake “tailored” liberalisation, i.e. to individually stipulate the degree of liberalisation in the various services sectors. The agreement explicitly recognises the right of WTO members to regulate the provision of services in order to attain their national policy goals.
New negotiations on services began in the WTO in February 2000 on the basis of a negotiating mandate already included in the GATS (Article XIX) with a view to a gradual increase in the global level of liberalisation. An initial organisational phase was concluded in March 2001 with the adoption of guidelines for the negotiations.
The launch of the world trade round by the 4th WTO Ministerial Conference on 14 November 2001 (the Doha Round) also gave an important boost to the negotiations on services. The Ministerial Declaration from Doha confirmed the guidelines of March 2001 and mapped out the timetable for the negotiations. As a result, the negotiations on services were included as a central issue in the ongoing Doha Round.
Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS)
The TRIPS Agreement requires the WTO members to comply with minimum standards for all types of intellectual property, and especially for patents, authors’ rights, trade marks and services marks, design patents and designations of geographical origin. It has been in force since 1 January 1996 for industrialised countries, since 1 January 2000 for developing countries and countries in transition, since 1 January 2006 for the least developed countries, and since 2016 for pharmaceutical patents.
Agreement on Agriculture
The WTO Agreement on Agriculture is a special part of the provisions of the GATT. In the Uruguay Round of the GATT, this agreement included fixed rules for the international agricultural trade in the GATT for the first time. It imposes an absolute restriction on trade-distorting subsidies in the agriculture sector and provides an exhaustive definition of what support measures are unreservedly admissible. Price support and product-related subsidies without quantitative restrictions are trade-distorting, as are export refunds. Europe has removed almost all the trade-distorting subsidies in the course of the various agricultural policy reforms, and the ongoing reform does not envisage any more funding for export refunds.
The absolute level of agricultural tariffs is restricted by the agreement; additional safeguard duties may only be imposed in exceptional cases.
In the context of the Doha negotiations, trade-distorting subsidies are to be cut further, all forms of export subsidies abolished, and agricultural tariffs significantly cut. The special and differential treatment for developing countries is an integral element of all the parts of the negotiations.
The aim of the Federal Government in the negotiations on agriculture is to ensure both the continued existence and the future viability of the European model of multifunctional agriculture, and to enable developing countries to have
equal participation in world trade.
Anti-Dumping Agreement
The adoption of the GATT in 1947 introduced not only the general principles of free trade but also uniform principles in Article VI for fending off significant distortions of competition in international trade caused by dumping and subsidies by means of anti-dumping / countervailing duties.
The rules of the WTO’s Anti-Dumping Agreement pursue the aim of making the instrument sustainably competition-enhancing via strict procedural rules and a large number of definitions, and of preventing any misuse of this instrument for protectionist purposes. The WTO’s Anti-Dumping Code gives the industry of an importing country the possibility to defend itself against significant distortions of competition in international trade resulting from dumping.
Together with the European Commission and other EU Member States, Germany pays strict attention to ensuring that the legal preconditions for anti-dumping measures are strictly observed throughout the WTO and that the anti-dumping instrument is not misused for protectionist purposes. Germany’s export-oriented industry is increasingly affected by competition-distorting measures by third countries and their unjustified anti-dumping measures. There is therefore great interest in strengthening international discipline by improving the WTO Code in the context of a new WTO Round. At the 4th WTO Ministerial Conference in Doha in 2001, intensive discussions were followed by the decision to launch negotiations to strengthen the WTO rules on anti-dumping.
Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT Agreement)
The Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT Agreement), which was negotiated in the Uruguay Round and entered into force on 1 January 1995, is intended to prevent the establishment of unnecessary TBTs and to promote mutual recognition and harmonisation. The aim is to guarantee the right of members to adopt certain rules to attain a justified outcome, whilst at the same time to prevent the adoption of protectionist measures.
The TBT Agreement sets out the rules to be observed by state and non-state bodies when introducing technical regulations, standards and conformity assessment procedures. According to the TBT Agreement, the technical regulations and the conformity assessment procedures must not be more trade-restricting than is needed to attain a justified goal. Also, they must be transparent and non-discriminatory. It provides that the WTO members must use relevant international standards as a basis for their technical regulations, and thus serves international harmonisation. Finally, it promotes the mutual recognition of technical rules and conformity assessment procedures.
The notification procedure introduced for this purpose obliges all WTO members to grant other members access via the WTO Secretariat to the planned technical regulations and conformity assessment procedures. The notification forms and most of the notified texts are available to the public via the websites of the European Commission’s TBT Enquiry Point. Information on technical regulations can be obtained from the national enquiry point (PDF: 774 KB) (TBT Enquiry Point Deutschland) in the German Institute for Standardization.
WTO Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS Agreement)
The Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures stipulates what rules are admissible to protect the health of people, animals and plants. It only covers rules which can have a direct or indirect impact on international trade. SPS measures may only be taken to the extent that this is necessary to protect health. In this context, the SPS Agreement obliges the members to base their measures on existing international standards of the Codex Alimentarius, the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH), and the International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC). These are internationally agreed and thus in principle define the necessary level of protection. Requirements going beyond these agreements can only be imposed by a member if it can show, on the basis of a risk assessment undertaken in line with scientific principles, that they are necessary.
Government Procurement Agreement (GPA)
The Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) is a plurilateral agreement under the umbrella of the WTO (Art. III(2) WTO Agreement). This means that it is binding not on all WTO members, but only on those which have ratified it. In addition to rules to ensure a fair and transparent procurement procedure, it contains in particular the respective obligations of the contracting states regarding access to their procurement markets (coverage). These bilaterally negotiated obligations are stipulated in annexes containing the covered contracting authorities, contract thresholds, subject-matter of contracts, reservations etc.
Trade-Related Investment Measures (TRIMs)
The agreement, which was negotiated during the Uruguay Round, only covers investment measures which affect world trade. Certain investment measures can have trade-restricting and trade-distorting effects. The agreement states that no member should implement an investment measure that violates the provisions of Article III GATT (national treatment) or Article XI GATT (quantitative restrictions). A list of prohibited TRIMs, such as local content requirements, is part of the agreement. The agreement also set up a Committee on TRIMs which monitors the implementation of these obligations.
Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA)
The Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) entered into force on 22 February 2017. The TFA covers a number of measures to improve cross-border trade in goods via greater transparency, the streamlining of customs procedures, the reduction of bureaucracy and greater cooperation between customs authorities. In this way, the TFA should help to cut the costs of trade. These costs could be cut by up to 16% in developing countries and the least developed countries, and by up to 10% in industrialised countries.
Furthermore, the TFA contains special provisions granting developing countries greater flexibility in their implementation and technical and financial support towards the establishment of permanent capacities. In order to support the implementation of the agreement, Germany, together with other industrial states and in cooperation with companies operating around the world, has established the Global Alliance for Trade Facilitation. Also, the Alliance for Trade Facilitation was set up in Germany.
The negotiations on the TFA were completed at the 9th WTO Ministerial Conference in Bali (3-6 December 2013). It is the first multilateral trade agreement since the foundation of the World Trade Organization in the mid-1990s.