UK Issues Report on Boosting Plurilateral Trade Deals at WTO
The UK Trade Policy Observatory penned a new report laying out steps the UK can take to deliver plurilateral trade agreements at the World Trade Organization. The Department for International Trade-commissioned paper discusses the current state of play with plurilaterals and how to harness the potential of such groups, while concluding with a set of recommendations. The report points out how plurilaterals are a clear way to revitalize negotiations at the WTO, but that "scheduling is not first-best" for new plurilaterals that address issues not covered by the WTO. "A work programme in the WTO to define rules/criteria/procedures on how such OPAs can be annexed to the WTO will increase the prospects that WTO Members will be willing to pursue plurilateral co-operation inside -- as opposed to outside -- the WTO," the report said.
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The observatory also laid out a 10-point code to help establish a set of governance principles to give assurances to non-signatories that plurilaterals will be, and remain, open. Steps in this code include ensuring voluntary membership, establishing openness to subsequent accession by WTO members that didn't join the plurilateral at first, and laying out language stating that access to a plurilateral cannot be on terms that are more stringent than those that applied to the incumbent parties.