Wto Trade Dispute Settlement Mechanism

WTO is established on Jan 1^st , 1995.Comparing with former GATT, WTO has a major difference that it also regulates trade in service. This revision is to satisfy the objective reality needs of high-speeded development of international trade in service. One of the greatest achievements of Uruguay round negotiation is General Agreement On Trade in Service (GATS). And GATS is the first multilateral principles and rules, which regulate international trade in service, so how to comprehend and put them into practice is really a problem.The disputes of trade in service are submitted to by DSB and committee of trade in service, but disputes of trade in service submitted to WTO are not many. There are maybe two reasons resulting this. One reason is that GATS separates specific duty from general duty of a member. Most members do not open in immature departments. So the probability of violating commitments is very low. The other reason is that the disputes of GATS itself is not perfect, some duties of international trade in service are not the focus, only several disputes are involving trade in service.It can be anticipated that disputes in the field of trade in service will increase gradually and become more complicated as long as trade in service developed at a high speed and negotiations in this field go deeper and deeper and also the law system is becoming considered. Therefore, it is necessary to comprehend the main contents and the key law points, especially important to developing countries including China.The thesis analyses the system of disputes in the field of trade in service and main law points appearing in the process of settlement. There are mainly two parts of this thesis .The first part includes law basis, body of settlement and procedure of solving disputes,also including differences in settlement systems between trade in service and in goods. The second part analyses key law points in the procedure of solving the disputes. And in which way DSB explained the key law points in related cases. This makes the thesis seems to be more convincing and related the practice with theories.