Organization structure

 

Highest Authority: the Ministerial Conference

Ministerial Conference is the supreme body of the WTO, composed of representatives of all Members. The Ministerial Conference is authorized to carry out the functions of the WTO, take the actions necessary to this effect, and take decisions on matters under any of the Multilateral Trade Agreements if so requested by a Member. The Ministerial Conference is to meet at least once every two years. The first WTO Ministerial Conference was held in Singapore in December, 1996 (the Ministerial Declaration on Trade in Information Technology Products), the second in Geneva in May, 1998 (Declaration on Global Electronic Commerce), the Third in Seattle, Washington State, US between 30 November and 3 December 1999, and the Fourth in Doha, Qatar from 9 to 13 November 2001.

Second Level: General Council

General Council, also composed of representatives of all WTO members, is in charge of the daily business of the WTO and normally meets once every two months. General Council acts on behalf of the Ministerial Conference in the periods between its meetings, and reports directly to it. The General Council convenes also as the Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) and the Trade Policy Review Body (TPRB).

Third Level: Councils for each broad area of trade, namely, the Council for Trade in Goods (Goods Council), the Council for Trade in Services (Services Council), the Council for Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs Council). The three councils, consisting of all WTO members, deal with their respective areas of trade.

Six committees, also consisting of all WTO members, report to the General Council for different issues such as trade and development, the environment, regional trading arrangements, and administrative issues.

Fourth Level: Committees and working party dealing with specific subjects

The Goods Council has 11 committees. They consist of all WTO members. The Textiles Monitoring Body also reports to the Goods Council.

It should be noted that important breakthroughs are rarely made in any of these formal bodies. With consensus and without voting, informal consultations play a vital role in bringing a vastly diverse membership round to an agreement. Occasionally a deadlock can only be broken in a small group of two, three or four countries; sometimes at meetings they have organized themselves in their own countries. A multilateral package of commitments is usually the result of numerous bilateral, informal bargaining sessions. These informal consultations, however, are not separated from the formal meetings which are necessary for making formal decisions. Nor are the formal meetings unimportant. They are the forums for exchanging views, putting countries’ positions on the record, and ultimately for confirming decisions. The art of achieving Agreement among all WTO Members is to strike an appropriate balance, so that a breakthrough achieved among only a few countries can be acceptable to the rest of the membership.

The WTO Secretariat: In Article VI of the WTO Agreement, provision is made for the establishment of a Secretariat and the appointment of its Director-General. At present it has approximately five hundred staff members. The Secretariat, based in Geneva, Switzerland, has no decision-making powers. Its main duties are to supply technical and professional support for the various councils and committees, to provide technical assistance for developing countries, to monitor and analyze developments in world trade, to provide information to the public and the media and to organize the ministerial conferences. It also provides some forms of legal assistance in the dispute settlement process and advises governments wishing to become Members of the WTO. The WTO Secretariat is organized into 24 Divisions with functional, information and liaison, and support roles. Divisions are normally headed by a Director who reports to a Deputy-Director General or directly to the Director General. The professional staff is composed mostly of economists, lawyers and others with a specialization in international trade policy. The working languages of the WTO are English, French and Spanish.

 

Accession and Decision-Making procedure

The accession.

Any state or separate customs territory possessing full autonomy in the conduct of its external commercial relations and of the other matters related with its trade policies is eligible to accede to the WTO on terms agreed between it and WTO Members. Accession to the WTO is essentially a process of negotiation—quite different from the process of accession to other international entities, like the IMF, which is largely an automatic process.

The accession procedure:

Commencement of the Accession Process: An applicant submits a communication to the Director-General of the WTO, expressing its desire to accede to the WTO under Article XII. The General Council then considers the application and establishes a working party. Any member of the WTO can join the working party. The working party is chaired by a Chairperson selected after consultation with WTO Members and the applicant.

The fact-finding process: The applicant provides a Memorandum describing in detail its foreign trade regime, together with information on the currently applicable tariff schedule and copies of relevant laws and regulations in one of the WTO official languages. Members of the working party then ask questions about the Memorandum, examine the Memorandum and the questions and answers to study the conformity of the regime with the requirements of the WTO Agreements. Technical assistance at each stage of the accession process can be obtained from the Secretariat.

Bilateral negotiations: Bilateral market access negotiations between the applicant and Members of the working party on goods and services, as well as on the other specific terms of accession constitute the most critical element of the accession process. The phase commences either by the applying government tabling its initial offer on goods or services or interested WTO Members submitting their request lists to the applicant. The resulting market-access commitments of acceding governments can be considered to be the payment for the entry ticket into the WTO.

Report, Protocol of Accession and Entry into Force: Following the conclusion of bilateral negotiations between interesting Members and the Applicant, the working party prepares a Report and a draft Decision and Protocol of Accession, containing the terms of accession agreed by the Applicant and members of the working party. As part of the draft Protocol of Accession, the Schedule of Concessions and Commitments on Goods and the Schedule of Specific Commitments on Services are prepared. When the Draft Report, Draft Protocol and Schedule on Goods and Services have been finalized, the working party submits the package to the WTO General Council/ Ministerial Conference for approval. Following the decision of the General Council/ Ministerial Conference to adopt the package, the Protocol of Accession enters into force. Thirty days after acceptance by the applicant, it becomes a WTO member.

Now, the WTO has around 30 applicants negotiating membership. They are WTO observers. Besides, the WTO has 7 international organizations observers: UN,UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development), IMF, World Bank, Food and Agricultural Organization, World Intellectual Property Organization, Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Decision-making

Unlike other international organizations, the WTO normally makes decisions by consensus. Consensus is defined as the situation where no member, present at a meeting where a decision is taken, formally objects to the proposed decision. It should be noted that this is not the same as unanimity, since consensus is defeated only by a formal objection by a member present at the meeting. Thus, those absent do not prevent a consensus, nor does an abstention prevent a consensus. The main advantage is that decisions made this way are more acceptable to all Members. In case of trade sanctions, the sanctions are imposed by Members, not by the organization.

The WTO Agreement envisages four specific situations involving voting:

1) An interpretation of any of the multilateral trade Agreements can be adopted by a majority of three-quarters of WTO Members.

2) The Ministerial Conference can waive an obligation imposed on a particular member by a multilateral Agreement through a three-quarters majority.

3) Decisions to amend provisions of the multilateral Agreements can be adopted through approval either by all Members or by a two-thirds majority depending on the nature of the provision concerned. But the amendments only take effect for those WTO Members which accept them.

4) A decision to admit a new Member is taken by a two-thirds majority in the Ministerial Conference, or the General Council in between conferences.