Part III World Trade Law and Regional Trade Agreements, XIII The Multilateral and the Plurilateral Agreements on Trade

Subject(s):

International investment law — International monetary law — Specific trade agreements

This chapter discusses multilateral and plurilateral trade agreements. The World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement distinguishes between the Multilateral Trade Agreements and the Plurilateral Trade Agreements. The multilateral agreements are binding on all WTO Members and must be ratified, together with the WTO Agreement, as a whole. Plurilateral agreements are optional in character and only obligate those members which choose to ratify them. The chapter also provides a section devoted to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) 1994, which is the most significant multilateral trade agreement. Understandings of several Articles of the GATT 1994 and other Multilateral Trade Agreements concretize or supplement provisions of the GATT 1994.