Czech Yearbook Vol. 4 2013

263 / 350

THE STATE OF PLAY AND FUTURE OF SERVICES NEGOTIATIONS IN THE WTO
Single Undertaking.83 Such treatment does not take into account that in ‘a world of
global supply chains, the competitiveness of services has become a major component
of the competitiveness of industry.’84 The recent focus on global value chains, such as
through the ‘Made in the World’ initiative, illustrates that the WTO is trying hard
to get this point across to the Members.85 For one, the Committee on International
Trade (INTA) of the European Parliament appears to have understood the message.86
Moreover, it cannot be said that there have been no attempts to reap some of the
benefits of services liberalisation. First, there has been a clear increase in regional
trade agreements (RTAs) with ever more extensive services chapters.87 More recently,
several mega-regional initiatives have entered the negotiation phase. Second,
negotiations on the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) are likely to formally start
soon. If concluded, TISA will be a plurilateral agreement which will encompass only
services. Its negotiating parties include inter alia the EU, United States and Japan,
however, no BRICS are involved. In a workshop at the European Parliament, it
became clear that TISA is envisaged as an RTA, and hence is to remain outside the
GATS and WTO frameworks.88 The combined effect of RTAs, mega-regionals, and
an agreement such as TISA may indicate that there will not be much of an incentive
for those Members with strong offensive interests in services negotiations to invest
in an ambitious outcome for services negotiations at the WTO. It also implies that
those negotiations remain merely a bargaining chip vis-à-vis those Members that are
not included in these bilateral initiatives.
Sadly, this does not come as a surprise. A recent Draft Resolution for the European
Parliament on the opening of TISA negotiations sums up the issues: (i) as is clear from
this article, there has been limited attention for services in the DDA; (ii) as noted, GATS
does not reflect the actual state of services liberalisation; and (iii) services becoming
increasingly important to trade in general, both as a larger part of global trade and as
83 Delimatsis, ‘Due Process and ‘Good’ Regulation Embedded in the GATS – Disciplining Regulatory
Behaviour in Services through Article VI of the GATS ’ 49; Panagiotis Delimatsis, ‘Article XIX GATS’
in Rüdiger Wolfrum, Peter-Tobias Stoll and Clemens Feinäugle (eds), Max Planck Commentaries on
World Trade Law: WTO – Trade in Services, vol 6 (Martinus Nijhoff 2008) 444.
84 World Trade Organization, ‘Lamy Urges “Smart Policies” to Maintain European Competitiveness’
(2012) < accessed 22 October 2012.
85 See Made in the World at , where
information is gathered with respect to the problems arising from global value chains for statistics on trade.
86 European Parliament, ‘Motion for a Resolution on Opening the Negotiations on a Plurilateral
Agreement on Services’, B7-/2013, 4 April 2013, 2.
87 Martin Roy, Juan A Marchetti and Hoe Lim, ‘Services Liberalization in the New Generation of
Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs): How Much Further than the GATS?’ (2007) 6 World
Trade Review 155, 155 & 185; Rafael Leal-Arcas, ‘Proliferation of Regional Trade Agreements:
Complementing or Supplanting Multilateralism?’ (2010-2011) 11 Chicago Journal of International
Law 597, 622.
88 European Parliament – Policy Department for the Committee on International Trade, ‘Workshop: The
Plurilateral Agreement on Services’, 26 March 2013, Brussels. Both Deputy US Trade Representative
Mr Michael Punke and Mr Jean-Luc Demarty, Director-General of DG Trade confirmed that TISA is
to be concluded under Article V GATS.