Photo by Sara Kurfeß on Unsplash

Author: Hazel V J Moir, ANU Centre for European Studies

This Policy Note is the part of the Third Country Engagement with EU Trade Policy (EUT+3) project supported by the Jean Monnet Erasmus+ Programme

The Uruguay Round trade negotiations started in 1986 and culminated with the 1994 Marrakesh Agreement. This bundled a reformed General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), with a range of agreements extending well beyond tariffs on goods. It also transformed the GATT Secretariat into the World Trade Organization (WTO). The extended WTO remit covered, inter alia, agriculture, sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures, subsidies, trade in services and intellectual property.1 The result is that to be a WTO member a country must agree to all the packaged treaties.

Some areas were excluded from the package. Following massive civil unrest, the proposed multilateral investment agreement did not proceed. Other agreements, such as on government procurement, were agreed to be optional.

In the decades since then, the range of topics covered in bi-lateral and plurilateral trade agreements has broadened. This broadening in scope is the subject of this Policy Note. It focuses on the breadth of content of the five recently concluded EU agreements and the two currently being negotiated. The implications of the beyond trade in goods chapters for domestic regulations are a focus of attention.

Please see the attached document for more information.