Challenges to the New World Trade Organization

by Pitou van Dijck (Editor)

The World Trade Organization will become the overall and comprehensive multilateral framework for regulating international trade and trade-related matters. Notwithstanding major achievements made during eight years of negotiations, there will be new challenges requiring rules and regulations in areas not yet adequately covered. Economists, lawyers and authors from trade unions and private companies approach the issues of regionalism, labour standards and environmental protection from different angles and from the North--South perspective. The first challenge is to bring about a `level playing field'; this book tackles key questions such as the types of standards that are required, the roles of institutions and the enforcement mechanisms with regard to trade related investment measures, intellectual property rights, labour and environmental conditions. The second challenge is the new wave of regional preferential trade systems: this book deals with the WTO compatibility of these far-reaching integration schemes and the lessons for global liberalisation that might be learned from these regional experiments. This book is an important and timely resource for those who are interested and involved in the shaping of the new World Trade Organization.

372 pages, Hardcover

First published May 29, 1996