The European Union (EU) has assumed an increasingly important role within the World Trade Organization (WTO), however, not without controversy. This Commentary, by Christina Eckes, a lecturer at the University of Surrey and expert on European Union law, provides an analysis of the role of the Community within the WTO and the emerging issues of representation, mixed agreements and the direct effect of WTO law within the European legal order.
Ms. Eckes writes: The EC is an official member of the WTO, and it plays a distinct role either in place of or alongside the Member States. Within the WTO, the Doha Development Agenda (DDA) has the objective of further opening domestic markets, while at the same time promoting further rules to assist developing countries in integrating into the world trading system. In the negotiations of the DDA, the EC is one of the key players.
As the ECJ pointed out in International Fruit Company, even before becoming a member itself, the Community had actually taken over the position of the Member States as the contracting party of the GATT 1947. Since the conclusion of the GATT 1947, successive GATT rounds have reduced tariffs to minimum levels and extended the trade agenda to include a range of non-tariff barriers issues and domestic regulatory issues such as services, environmental policies, food safety, and animal health issues.
The Community’s competence for trade, and entering into trade agreements, is based on the CCP, which has often been described as the “lynchpin” of the Community. However, it has been jeopardised by a continuous reluctance on the part of the Member States to accord the Commission the necessary autonomy to negotiate on behalf of the EC. Still, the Commission successfully negotiated, on behalf of the Member States, two major trade rounds under GATT, in addition to many bilateral agreements. As the problems have become compounded by the sensitivity of the key issues at hand such as external relations, exclusive powers, and qualified majority voting, the Member States have on a series of occasions delayed and denied progress. The result is that the EU has become an unpredictable creature to negotiate with in international trade rounds. [footnotes omitted]