The Road to WTO Membership

Abstract

The GATT was not a formal international organization and therefore it had contracting parties and not members. Given that the WTO has been established as an international organization, states or separate customs territories may become its members in accordance with the rules contained in Articles XI and XII of the Marrakech Agreement Establishing the World Trade Organization (WTO Agreement). Of course, accession to the WTO is more complex than it was to the GATT, requiring the acceptance of the WTO Agreement and all the multilateral agreements which extend the scope of obligations beyond trade in goods to such new areas as trade in services, trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights, a more stringent dispute settlement system and the trade policy review mechanism.²⁴⁴ Accession, however, does not require the acceptance of the plurilateral trade agreements (Agreements on Trade in Civil Aircraft and Government Procurement), which are included in Annex 4 of the WTO Agreement.²⁴⁵ As a result of the Uruguay Round, the WTO has become a global organization which administers trade institutions in the areas mentioned above.