Uruguay Round
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- See also: General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
The Uruguay Round commenced in September 1986 and continued until April 1994. The round, based on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) ministerial meeting in Geneva (1982), was launched in Punta del Este in Uruguay (hence the name), followed by negotiations in Montreal, Geneva, Brussels, Washington, D.C., and Tokyo, with the 20 agreements finally being signed in Marrakech - the Marrakesh Agreement. The Round transformed the GATT into the World Trade Organization.
See the Doha Development Round for the following round.
[edit] Goals
The main objectives of the Uruguay Round were:
They also wanted to draft a code to deal with copyright violation and other forms of intellectual property rights.
[edit] Background
The 1982 Ministerial Declaration identified problems including structural deficiencies, spill-over impacts of certain countries' policies on world trade GATT could not manage. To address these issues, the eighth GATT round (known as the Uruguay Round) was launched in September 1986, in Punta del Este, Uruguay.[1] It was the biggest negotiating mandate on trade ever agreed: the talks were going to extend the trading system into several new areas, notably trade in services and intellectual property, and to reform trade in the sensitive sectors of agriculture and textiles; all the original GATT articles were up for review.[2]
The round was supposed to end in December 1990, but the US and EU disagreed on how to reform agricultural trade and decided to extend the talks.[3] Finally, In November 1992, the US and EU settled most of their differences in a deal known informally as "the Blair House accord", and on April 15, 1994, the deal was signed by ministers from most of the 123 participating governments at a meeting in Marrakesh, Morocco.[4] The agreement established the World Trade Organization, which came into being upon its entry into force on January 1, 1995, to replace the GATT system.[2] It is widely regarded as the most profound institutional reform of the world trading system since the GATT's establishment.[5]
[edit] Achievements
The GATT still exists as the WTO's umbrella treaty for trade in goods, updated as a result of the Uruguay Round negotiations (a distinction is made between GATT 1994, the updated parts of GATT, and GATT 1947, the original agreement which is still the heart of GATT 1994).[6] The GATT 1994 is not however the only legally binding agreement included in the Final Act; a long list of about 60 agreements, annexes, decisions and understandings was adopted. In fact, the agreements fall into a simple structure with six main parts:
[edit] Criticism
Groups such as Oxfam have criticized the Uruguay Round for paying insufficient attention to the special needs of developing countries. One aspect of this criticism is that figures very close to rich country industries — such as former Cargill executive Dan Amstutz — had a major role in the drafting of Uruguay Round language on agriculture and other matters. As with the WTO in general, Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as Health Gap and Global Trade Watch also criticize what was negotiated in the Round on intellectual property and industrial tariffs as setting up too many constraints on policy-making and human needs.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
* Martin-Winters, The Uruguay Round, 2 ^ P. Gallagher, The First Ten Years of the WTO, 4
* The Uruguay Round, World Trade Organization ^ Overview: a Navigational Guide, World Trade Organization. For the complete list of "The Uruguay Round Agreements", see WTO legal texts, World Trade Organization, and Uruguay Round Agreements, Understandings, Decisions and Declarations, WorldTradeLaw.net
