A Study On Russia’s Accession To The WTO

In21st century, human beings have entered the era of globalization characterized by the free flow of all kinds of production factors and recourses all over the world with an aim to realize their optimal allocation. Facing the impact and challenges brought about by globalization, different types of countries have taken measures from the actual conditions of their own countries from different perspectives in an effort to integrate into globalization in order to minimize the negative impact and challenges arising from globalization and maximize the interests. Only by participation in the World Trade Organization-the most important multilateral trade organization in the world, there is a way to better incorporate the tide of economic globalization. On August,22,2012, Russia has finally and officially become a member of the big family of World Trade Organization. Russia’s process of accession to the WTO was long, it extended for more than19years. In order to become a member of the WTO, Russia has made a lot of efforts, and the process was tough but Russia has made huge progress, especially achieved bilateral negotiations with the United States, which has tremendous sense to the progress of joining WTO.The world multilateral trading system is beneficial from Russia’s accession to the WTO, the WTO needs Russia, when Russia joins the WTO, the WTO is truly complete, and thus is able to play more important part in the world scope, as well as to be able to deal with the international trade problems. Russia had to join WTO, it is a great opportunity but also a challenge for Russia to be part of this organization. Being the member of the WTO, Russia can get equal international market position, be more conducive to participate in competition in the international market, expanding exports; Secondly, Russia can use WTO dispute settlement mechanisms to address the trade dispute in order to protect its interests, and have opportunity to participate in formulating the WTO rules. Participation in the WTO will also help Russia to commit domestic reform, and improve the competitiveness of domestic enterprises. Of course the WTO will also bring Russia tough influence, firstly, it can pound great influence to the domestic market, and then the economic system, and the domestic laws and regulations system. Inspite of these facts, Russia has shown significant courage, commitment and efforts to join the WTO. As one of the member, it will certainly use the opportunity of WTO accession as part of a wider strategy to improve the competitiveness of the Russian economy system and to successfully integrate into the global marketplace in order to increase welfare for the Russian people.The dissertation includes four main aspects. First part introduces the history review of Russia’s accession to the WTO from1992to1999and during the presidency of Mr. Putin V.V., it analyses all the important terms and conditions along with main liabilities of joining the WTO and all official "pro and con"s about the fact of accession. The second part mainly analyses the position of the country and all negotiations of Russian Government during the process of entering the WTO. After entering the WTO Russian Government must adhere to the principle that the national interests must not be violated, as well as to protect the national market at great efforts. The main obstacles that Russian Government has encountered were:tariffs, agricultural subsidies, the service market access issues, legal system standards and investments. These questions are all very important obstacles in the process of Russia’s entry into the WTO, by solving these problems, Russia managed to be part of the organization.The innovation of this dissertation is mainly reflected in the folowing aspects: Firstly, there is rich variety of limited bibliography written by famous russian politic and economic researchers, which gives a more detailed information and data about the main topic. Secondly, it describes Russia’s politic and economic relations with power countries in the WTO and analyses the advantages these relations can bring to Russia inside the WTO along with successful experience of China and the US of participation in the organization.This dissertation also consists some inadequacies:due to the fact that Russia has just joined the WTO less than a year ago, there is some limitation of the new data bibliography along with absence of certain graphs and detailed interpretations. Those are to be improved in the future.