On The Article5of General Agreement On Trade In Services

In terms of current theory and practice, there are two approaches to achieve tradeliberalization, namely the WTO multilateral trade system and regional trade system. However,in recent years, due to the huge transaction costs of multilateral trade system, regionaleconomic integration has become a global trend of economic deveopment. Accompanied bythe development of trade in services on the global scale and frustration of the process ofmultilateral trade liberalization, every country continues to take trade in services into theregional trade agreements, to promote the rapid development of regional liberalization oftrade in services.As the important results of the multilateral trade in services, Article5of the GeneralAgreement on Trade in Services (GATS) makes provisions for economic integrationagreements, which covers not only substantive elements as" has substantial sectoral coverage"," the absence or elimination of substantially all discrimination” and “shall not raise theoverall level of barriers to trade in services”,but also procedural elements as “notice”,“reportperiodically” and “examine”. These elements are not only involving the legality of rules oftrade in services created by regional organizations, but also relating to common problemsfaced by the regional economic integration agreements. However, there are some vague andambiguous concepts in Article5of the GATS. Therefore, this thesis from the point of view oftheoretical and empirical analysis, combines the research methods in text, comparative andeconomics prospects and tries to clarify the legal issues related to Article5of the GATS, thenhopes to offer useful suggestions for China to carry out the multilateral negotiations onArticle5of the GATS and participate in the regional trade in services cooperation.This thesis is divided into five parts:The first part of this thesis would analyze the basic theoretical issues, starting from thedefinition of "economic integration" in Article5of GATS, provides a brief analysis on thelegal basis,present situation and causes of regional economic integration in trade in services.The second part of the thesis would take deep analysis of the formulation of Article5ofGATS and its legal framework. This part will take a historical research approach, to proceedfrom the conclusion and negotiation background of Article5of GATS, and attempt to explore the basic issues involved in Article5of GATS as a starting point, meanwhile, together withanalysis of the scope and legal framework of Article5of GATS.The third part of the thesis would employ the text analysis of the substantiverequirements of Article5of GATS, clarify the meaning of " has substantial sectoral coverage"," the absence or elimination of substantially all discrimination” and “shall not raise theoverall level of barriers to trade in services”. Moreover, based on reality, combined withArticle24of GATT for comparative study, and taking members’ proposal as a reference, todemonstrate the scientific and defects of the substantive requirements, and to makerecommendations on some specific issues.The fourth part of the thesis would focuse on5of the procedural elements of Article5ofGATS. Procedural elements as “notife”,”report periodically” and “examine” are concretemanifestations of the transparency mechanism. This part will combine with similar termscontained in other provisions of GATS and GATT to comparatively analyze, in order toexplore the clarity of explanation from the same frame system, point out the defects of theprocedural elements and timely give some recommendations.Finally, the fifth part of the thesis would, based on previous four-sector analysis, putforward the proposal on Article5of GATS. Since some specific proposals have been putforward in the third and fourth sector, and negotiations are the start and end of Article5ofGATS, this part will make suggestions from the negotiation as well as framework mechanismaspects make recommendations, and try to enrich and improve the Article5of GATS at themacro level.