The Application Of The Core Obligations Of Wto On International Competition Issues And To Build The Framework Of The Wto Competition Policy

With the promotion of WTO, the traditional multinational trade obstacles have been effectively cut down, while the international competition issues involving multinational businesses have caused a great deal of larger problems and gradually become one of the major obstructions affecting the multinational businesses. The WTO system is more favorable than any other systems to deal with that problem since it has extracted a lot of experiences from its Dispute Resolution Procedures. Since 1996, the first WTO Ministerial Declaration has announced the establishment of the WTO Working Group on the interaction between Trade and Competition Policy, and then the WTO members have been unanimous in the importance of addressing the international anti-competitive practices. In 2001, the fourth WTO Ministerial Declaration stated in paragraph 25 that further work in the Working Group would focus on clarifying the core obligations of WTO applicable to the international competition issues, including core principles and provisions of prohibiting international hardcore cartels. This thesis first analyzes the deficiency of the core obligations' application to private practices, and then points out that it is necessary to attribute private practices to the public actions so that it can accomplish the addressing function of the core obligations. Secondly, this thesis stresses that the national treatment of the core obligations applies to the state competition law, and then concludes that the national treatment cannot absolutely solve the issues of discriminatory application in state competition law and all kinds of international anti-competitive practices, especially those cartels which have external effects. And on the basis of above discussions this thesis discusses the functions of GATT Article 11, and argues that GATT Article 11 can absolutely solve all kinds of anti-competitive practices. Thus this thesis concludes that it is important to make GATT Article 11 become the basic legal provisions to deal with international anti-competitive practices and suggests that it should treat GATT Article 11 as the core obligation in the future Competition Policy Agreement.