The fragmentation of the World Trade Organization’s rule-making function via Joint Initiatives is a real threat to the long-term continuity of WTO. Discuss (200 Words)
Refer - Financial Express
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IAS Parliament 3 years
KEY POINTS
· The WTO’s 12th ministerial conference (MC-12) will commence in Geneva on November 30. At stake is the relevance of this multilateral organisation in an increasingly fragmented world.
· “Consensus” has been the fundamental norm for WTO decision-making. An important theoretical underpinning of this principle is that it provides the ability for all countries, irrespective of economic heft, to express dissent.
· Projected as joint initiatives (JIs) among interested members, these groups have focused on negotiations in the areas of domestic regulation (DR), e-commerce, investment facilitation and MSMEs.
· While clear legal pathways having been identified by participating members for incorporating the negotiated disciplines on services DR into WTO commitments on a “most favoured nation” (MFN) basis.
· JIs have, however, gathered momentum, and not just in terms of number of members but also in terms of the amount of trade they represent; of the 164 WTO members, 136 are participating in the JI on investment facilitation, 86 in e-commerce, 65 in services DR, and 70 in MSMEs.
· This needs to be by ensuring that any new rules are based on WTO’s core principle of multilateral decision-making. This may also require consideration of the fact that the very principles of multilateralism can be used to insist that JIs need to be negotiated at the multilateral level.
K. V. A 3 years
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IAS Parliament 3 years
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