The Conformity Of The Regional Trade Agreements To WTO Rules

The Global Trading System is nowadays characterized by the creation and the multiplication of regional trade agreements (RTAs). Moreover, the last two decades have seen an explosion of regional trade agreements, some of them involving several countries, while many of them are bilateral. Some are local, within regions, others stretch across regions. Those agreements have various and particular objectives. However, they have a common goal:to favor the liberalization of the commercial exchanges among or between the States which are members. The regional trade agreements are at the origin of the commercial system called "Regionalism".On January 1,1995 the World Trade Organization (WTO) came into force and replaced the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The World Trade Organization deals with the rules of trade between nations at a global level. In this sense, it is a multilateral organization. The creation of the WTO does not challenge the existence of the regional trade agreements. Furthermore, about 462 regional agreements exist and have been notified to the WTO up to February 2010. But, the WTO provisions relating to RTAs oblige them to conform to the multilateral rules which are those of the WTO.The Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa (CEMAC) is a regional agreement created on March 16,1994 in N'Djamena (Chad) by six States of central Africa:Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon. The CEMAC is a customs union notified to the WTO and it is based on the trade in Goods.A vast quantity of writing on the subject of multilateralism and regionalism exists, and one might be tempted to ask what another study on the subject can add. This study looks and asks how to ensure that the regional agreements are in conformity with the WTO's rules.Here it is explained in short what our work is. We propose to analyze the question of the conformity of RTAs to the rules of the WTO like expresses the subject. We take the particular case of the CEMAC as an example.