The General Agreement on Trade in Services

Abstract

The conclusion of GATS and its inclusion as an annex in the constitutive Agreement of the World Trade Organization (WTO) responds to the need for disposing of a stable juridical instrument which, given the current economic interdependence between States, can be applied to the international trade in services.One of the main new features of this agreement is its field of application given that it includes all service sectors (except those provided for in the name of governmental authorities) and the four forms of carrying out trade in services and, as regards the principle of market access and that of national treatment, will be regulated according to those respective obligations which the Members have assumed.In exchange for not accepting the exclusion of any service sector, the negotiations concerning some fundamental sectors could not be totally closed and deadlines were extended in order to unblock the most controversial themes.One of the fundamental principles of the GATS is the most favoured nation clause of inconditional character but its consecration has been attenuated by the possibility of maintaining important exceptions in its application. The principle of transparency is also essential in the field of services, given that this sector is characterised by large public interventionism in access regulation and the exercise of the different economic activities which form it.The balance of the GATS is globally positive given that it includes a multilateral framework of principles and disciplines which is administered in the headquarters of the WTO, which have been accepted by a great majority of States within the international community and which remain subject to the WTO’s mechanism for the solution of differences.However, the opening of the market and the suppression of restrictions which derive from internal regulations have not been achieved given that, orientating itself around the objectives of national politics, liberalization is conceived as a progressive process which every Member must assume insofar as their possibilities allow them. The most negative aspects are linked to the non-conclusion of the negotiations in fundamental sectors of foreign trade in services and refer to the maintainance of considerable gaps which impede the observation of the immediate effects of the GATS, such as not having developed certain fundamental parts of the agreement with regard to areas such as public purchases, safeguards and subventions. In this way then, in spite of the limitations and ambiguities analysed in this article, the very existence of the agreement and that of the WTO imply a reaffirmation of the principles of cooperation and progress towards the free market principle at a multilateral level and this (together with other factors such as the development of the information highways) will promote the development and the universalization of many other services.