Research On The Jurisdictional Game Between RTAs And WTO Dispute Settlement Mechanisms

Along with the economic development, international trade relations became more and more complex and diverse. The dependence among countries is strengthening. The appearance of the World Trade Organization, i.e. WTO, has made the trend of economic globalization sweeping the world. At the same time, the appearance of the Regional Trade Agreements, i.e. RTAs, has made each kind of trade relations more reasonable and effective. The relatively independent economic organizations contact with each other more closely. The regional trade agreements not only promote the pace of the economic globalization, but also hindering it.WTO dispute settlement has its own unique mechanism, its objection and function are to protect the rights and obligations of each party member. However, the various regional trade agreements also have their own dispute settlement mechanisms, which may be different from the WTO dispute settlement mechanism. But all of the dispute settlement mechanisms are aim to protect the members’rights. Judicial settlement of international disputes is increasingly oriented, but a variety of international tribunals are fragmented. Serious concern has been called on how to coordinate with these international tribunals. There will be jurisdictional conflicts between WTO and RTAs dispute settlement mechanisms, due to the difference of the commitments of entity rights and obligations in WTO and RTAs. The reasons causing conflicts also include the RTAs and WTO in the upper range of people, and things have overlapping jurisdiction, the difference in jurisdiction modes, the imperfect provisions of international law on this controversial issue. Obviously, the direct cause of the jurisdiction between RTAs and WTO dispute settlement mechanisms is the involved parties having filed one dispute to the different dispute settlement body.Once a conflict occurs on the jurisdiction of RTAs and WTO dispute settlement mechanism, there will be some other conflicts occur as well, such as the selection of the court, parallel proceedings, and mutual recognition verdict and so on. Indeed, the selection of the court and parallel court proceedings, actually protect the right of the parties to appeal, but also cause a variety of issues, such as lowering the judicial efficiency, consuming the disputing parties effort and expense. The issues above are brought to the parties a lot of inconvenience. Especially for the developing countries, these problems will be a huge burden. Once the parallel lawsuit generated conflict verdicts, there will be issue in the mutual recognition of verdicts, and how to enforce the verdict in reality.There are three principles to follow during the procedures of solving the jurisdictional conflict between RTAs and the WTO dispute settlement mechanisms. The principle of parties’autonomy, the principle of self-restraint, and the principle of non bis in idem. The ways to solve the jurisdictional conflict between RTAs and the WTO dispute settlement mechanisms include:exclusive jurisdiction, jurisdiction by agreement, and monopoly on jurisdiction and so on. In addition, following the precedent is also a good way which derives from the practice of the international law. These methods all have their own unique features. The three principles above are going through the various problem-solving methods. Once you know the basic, you can deduce some methods to solve the problem, too.In the practice, the EU’s internal dispute resolution mechanism is the most complete, In the most circumstances, the EU members put their dispute to the European Court. Based on different types of provisions, NAFTA have different dispute settlement mechanisms. China-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement, i.e. CAFTA has special provisions on the dispute settlement area, but still on the stage of exploring and continues improving. FTAAP is moving from the vision to reality, and FTAAP can learn from the experiences from many other regional trade organizations which have been built already.In a word, the members in a regional trade agreement are less than the members in an international organization, so it is easier to reach an agreement on some special items. The regional trade agreements’ development provides a good opportunity for trade liberalization. This is worth pondering on how to grasp this opportunity and take advantage of it, rather than letting the jurisdiction conflict between different dispute settlement mechanisms ruin all the conveniences and advantages of regional trade agreements. During the exploration of finding a specific way to solving the jurisdictional conflict between RTA (the specific RTA which the country stays) and WTO dispute settlement mechanisms, various principles and methods should be taken according to the actual circumstance. And it is also learnt some perfect experience from the long-historical regional trade agreements.