Legal Analysis Of International Coordination On Competition Issue Under The Framework Of WTO

Traditionally, competition regulations and policies fall within domestic economic regulation, which mainly concerned with issues of economic competition system. Although there is no internationally agreed competition policy at the current stage, the effort for the international harmony, especially under the WTO framework, has been being in progress. The international coordination of competition policy has had various approaches. International community took a lot of efforts to try to obtain international coordination in terms of competition policy and indeed some substantial achievements in bilateral or regional cooperation area have been made. However, the most ideal way to resolve the conflicts or contradiction of competition policy between different countries is to obtain multilateral coordination in a higher level. Therefore, the WTO framework has been treated as one of the most effective and ideal approaches to coordinate different competition policies. Nevertheless, the differences as to national interests and legal system are still there even though the whole issue has been taken into consideration under WTO framework. Member countries of WTO have diverse economic interests and the weight of competition policy in their whole economic policies is quite different as well. The gap is extremely huge between developed country and developing country because of the difference of their status and economic power in the international economic market. Yet, there are also quite a few positive factors in the current international economic and politic environment. Therefore, there are still many difficulties faced by members to coordinate competition policy under framework of WTO. It is submitted that those positive factors are able to overcome the diversities and conflicts between those member countries and the proposal to build a multinational competition policy will be successful eventually. At the current stage, members of WTO could achieve agreement concerning competition related to trade via negotiation under the framework of WTO. In order to mitigate potential conflicts caused by different competition policy, it is necessary for WTO members to obtain consensus as to the basic principle, concepts and the object of such regulation, the channel and procedure to negotiate etc. The main purpose of those negotiations is to set up the foundation of multinational competition regulation which is our ultimate objective.