Plurilateral Agreements

Abstract

AbstractThe GATT 1947, a treaty between contracting parties that functioned on the basis of consensus, was very difficult to amend and expand. As discussed in Chapters 1 and 2, in an effort to circumvent this problem, in the 1960s and 1970s groups of like-minded countries that sought to agree on more specific rules for policies covered by the GATT negotiated so-called codes of conduct. These codes bound only signatories, and were mostly applied on a MFN basis. Most of the existing codes were mapped into the WTO during the Uruguay Round, and their disciplines became binding upon all WTO members. They are discussed in Chapters 5 and 9. However, four Tokyo Round codes were not converted into multilateral agreements. Instead they became so-called plurilateral agreements. These bind only signatories and do not have to be applied on a MFN basis. As the WTO has no general MFN obligation—nondiscrimination requirements are contained in each of the various multilateral trade agreements—the plurilateral agreements contained in Annex 4 of the WTO are examples of what has been termed conditional MFN agreements.