wto
The World Trade Organization is an organization supervising, regulating and settling disputes about international trade. Part of the regulating mandate is also further liberalisation of international trade. The organization is the custodian of an impressive number of wide-ranging agreements covering the basic rules for trade in goods, in services and in trade-related intellectual property rights. Some of the specific subjects are agriculture, standards and safety, anti-dumping and subsidies rules, non-tariff barriers, trade facilitation, dispute settlement and transparency of the national trade environment for policy and rules in member states. Most of the agreements date from the GATT Uruguay Round 1986-94. They were incorporated in the WTO when the organization was established on January 1, 1995 under the Marrakech Agreement.
30 years after it was established, the WTO stands at a crossroads. The second tier of its dispute settlement system, the Appellate Body, is now non-functional following disagreement between the United States and a number of other countries, including the EU, about its proper functioning. The negotiating arm of the organisation has suffered from much adversity over the years, the biggest achievement being the Trade Facilitation Agreement from 2013. Within the framework of the UN, member states committed to SDG 14.6, reaching an agreement on prohibiting harmful fishery subsidies before the end of 2020 – such an a agreement was partly reached in 2022 during the organisation’s successful 12th Ministerial Conference held in Geneva. Negotiations continue aiming at completing the agreement before the 14th Ministerial Conference.
As a trade dependent open economy Denmark as a member of the European Union strongly supports the WTO as the key organisation in a multilateral rules-based trading system and hopes that the initiatives of the EU and like-minded countries to reform the organisation will bear fruit over the coming years. For Denmark, the EU and like-minded countries, it is also of paramount importance that the WTO will be able to handle new challenges in areas like trade and climate change/environment.
April 2024.
30 years after it was established, the WTO stands at a crossroads. The second tier of its dispute settlement system, the Appellate Body, is now non-functional following disagreement between the United States and a number of other countries, including the EU, about its proper functioning. The negotiating arm of the organisation has suffered from much adversity over the years, the biggest achievement being the Trade Facilitation Agreement from 2013. Within the framework of the UN, member states committed to SDG 14.6, reaching an agreement on prohibiting harmful fishery subsidies before the end of 2020 – such an a agreement was partly reached in 2022 during the organisation’s successful 12th Ministerial Conference held in Geneva. Negotiations continue aiming at completing the agreement before the 14th Ministerial Conference.
As a trade dependent open economy Denmark as a member of the European Union strongly supports the WTO as the key organisation in a multilateral rules-based trading system and hopes that the initiatives of the EU and like-minded countries to reform the organisation will bear fruit over the coming years. For Denmark, the EU and like-minded countries, it is also of paramount importance that the WTO will be able to handle new challenges in areas like trade and climate change/environment.
Update May 2024.