Is it time for WTO members to rethink how ratifications work?

Not one, but two: go to the Legal Texts page on the WTO website and we find this

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By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED AUGUST 3, 2023 | UPDATED MARCH 3, 2024

The agreements of the World Trade Organization are not always what they seem. For example, even those who know the multilateral trading system quite well might be surprised to learn that there are not one, but two versions of the WTO’s intellectual property agreement.

Go to the Legal Texts page on the WTO website and we find this:

Annex 1C  Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) (unamended version)

TRIPS Agreement (as amended on 23 January 2017)

If we follow the links we can see the difference. It’s about improving access to medicines — suspending some rules so poor countries’ can import patented medicines more easily.

What we can’t see is also important. We can’t see which countries apply which version of the agreement (called “TRIPS” for trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights).

Take two neighbours, Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, with similar population sizes and similar gross domestic product.

‘Fisheries subsidies’ has been agreed by WTO ministers. What’s next?

UPDATE
Agreement was reached at the
rescheduled June 12–17 Ministerial Conference
Consensus was achieved by leaving out disciplines on subsidies contributing to overcapacity and overfishing (Article 5). Members agree to complete negotiations on these in four years or else the new agreement will lapse (Article 12).

The final text is here (also in pdf).
It only gained consensus backing by removing a missing piece.
It says the new agreement will be inserted into Annex 1A (goods) after the Subsidies and Countervailing Measures Agreement. An official document certifying that the text is correct was circulated on July 13, 2022.

More updates are listed here
The points raised in the article below still hold even though it was first written before the original 2021 dates for the Ministerial Conference.

By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED NOVEMBER 17, 2021 | UPDATED AUGUST 18, 2022

It was always touch-and-go whether World Trade Organization (WTO) members could strike a deal on curbing harmful fisheries subsidies when their ministers were due to meet first in November 2021, and then rescheduled in June 2022.

The agreement that they did eventually reach is incomplete. Consensus was achieved by leaving out disciplines on subsidies contributing to overcapacity and overfishing. Members agreed to complete negotiations on these within in four years of the new agreement taking effect, or else it will lapse.

But even with the deal that was struck, there are more procedures to go through before it becomes WTO law and before it applies to WTO members.

That’s right. Even though agreement was reached on June 17, 2022, for now (July 2022) it is still not effective. It is not part of WTO law.

This article is about what is needed to turn the agreement into legal rules. How long that will take is up in the air, but it could be a year or two at least. It might even take longer.

That said, there’s nothing to stop members implementing unilaterally what they agree. On an issue like this they should do so anyway. But they would not be able to use, for example, WTO dispute settlement against other countries because there would be no legal rules yet.

The procedures are worth bearing in mind. They are not well-known, even among people who follow trade.

This was demonstrated when I ran a little poll on Twitter on this subject. Out of 150 people who responded, 86% were wrong.

Update: the three essential tasks for the WTO’s trade facilitation deal

By Peter Ungphakorn
FEBRUARY 22, 2018 | UPDATED FEBRUARY 22, 2018

A year ago today, the World Trade Organization’s Trade Facilitation Agreement took effect in the ratifying countries amid a blaze of publicity, two decades after it was first proposed.

It was the first new WTO agreement since the late 1990s and its potential benefit was huge, particularly for implementing countries and particularly if their own procedures for handling imports and exports at the border were cumbersome.

Hard work lies ahead now that the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement has been activated in 112 countries

Cape Town: South Africa is one of 51 countries that have not yet ratified the agreement

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By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED FEBRUARY 25, 2017 | UPDATED FEBRUARY 28, 2017

It’s always tempting, when a tough negotiation has concluded, to breathe a sigh of relief and proclaim “job done”. But with trade agreements, the job is rarely done. For the World Trade Organization’s shiny new Trade Facilitation Agreement, seriously hard work lies ahead if it is to achieve its potential.

Can EU law really dictate World Trade Organization rules?

By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED DECEMBER 1, 2016 | UPDATED AUGUST 21, 2023

If you visit the WTO website today, bang in the middle of the homepage is a countdown image declaring that only 10 ratifications are needed before the Trade Facilitation Agreement enters into force.

From wto.org homepage December 1, 2016

What you won’t see is another countdown that should be even more exciting.  Much closer to entering into force is a long overdue amendment on pharmaceutical patents — only three more ratifications are needed.

The race for the first ever WTO amendment: some key facts

By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED JULY 31, 2016 | UPDATED AUGUST 8, 2023

The World Trade Organization agreements are over 20 years old. Economic and trade needs are changing fast. And yet the agreements have never been updated — until now. Two amendments have reached the target. To achieve that they needed 110 ratifications, two thirds of the WTO’s 164 members.

WTO amendment on access to medicines faces EU conundrum

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Note: The “conundrum” was dodged on January 23, 2017 when five countries were officially announced to have ratified the amendment. The total leapt over the targeted 110 to 112. Now that the target has been reached, this blog post will no longer be updated. But the conundrum remains unresolved.

(More up-to-date information from 2023 is available here).

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By Peter Ungphakorn
FIRST PUBLISHED BY IP-WATCH, APRIL 14, 2016
REVISED AND POSTED HERE JUNE 12, 2016  |  UPDATED NOVEMBER 30, 2016

After waiting for over a decade, the World Trade Organization is finally close to achieving the first ever amendment to its rule-book, with only a handful of members still needing to formally accept new intellectual property provisions dealing with one aspect of access to medicines.