| The history of GATT/WTO dispute settlement system has always been accompanied by the intervention of third parties,to which the WTO members are paying more attention nowadays than they ever did. As far as the disputes under WTO system are concerned, the members of WTO act more as third parties seeking intervention into the dispute settlementproceedings than as parties to disputes. By the rules of DSU, the problem of third party intervention in the WTO dispute settlement proceedings has been theorized and standardized, which makes the problem of third party intervention "emerge from under the water". As a matter of fact, almost all the cases under WTO dispute settlement proceedings are involved by one or more third parties' interventions. By tracing to the history of third party intervention in the GATT/WTO dispute settlement system, this article introduces and furthermore confirmed the rules relating to third party interventions under WTO, as well as the relative practices. The main source of third party's right of intervention is the covered agreement between parties to the dispute and third party；There exists an opposite but uniform relationship between the intervention of third party and the principle of party autonomy；The restrictions that WTO imposes on an eligible third party are the results out of: a balance of the aims of WTO and its principles, the nature of WTO dispute settlement system and some economic elements。By looking into the rules and practices of third party intervention in the procedure of International Court of Justice,this article makes it possible both a deeper comprehension and a bettering of the problem of third party intervention in the WTO dispute settlement proceedings. China, as a developing country, has successfully become a member of WTO. It is unavoidable that it will face such situations as joining a dispute under WTO as a third party in the future, so a complete and scientific understanding of this problem is especially important for China.
|
PDF Full Text Request