Universalism and Regionalism in International Trade Law. Is the WTO a Truly Universal International Organization?

Abstract

In the field of international trade law, the relationship between universalism and regionalism follows a peculiar logic. The proliferation of regional economic groups concomitantly and after the strengthening of a ‘universal’ trade system, personified by the WTO, is considered as a paradoxical phenomenon. The present essay tries to explain the origins of this paradox.

In part, the causes of the rise of regionalism should be referred to the fall of the Berlin Wall, which chronologically precedes by only five years the signature of the Marrakech Agreement, that created the WTO. The GATT, which symbolized the ‘universal’ legal order after the Second World War, was drafted with the tacit purpose of restraining the propagation of the communist pattern of State. During the Cold War period, the contracting parties of the GATT would have continued to refer formally to the common rules of the General Agreement for international security reasons. This, notwithstanding the fact that global economy was already so to say multipolarised and that, consequently, international commercial relationships were canalized towards several regional spheres of economic influence. The end of the Cold War, in dissipating the need of cohesion and compromise among the GATT/WTO Member States, would have had the result of unchaining centrifugal (as to the WTO) and centripetal (as to the several existing economic poles) forces.

The above considerations should have thus been the premises of the formidable expansion of regionalism which showed itself ever since the beginning of the Nineties. As regards the period following the establishment of the WTO, the proliferation of regional groups can be explained rather easily if one considers that the relationships between the WTO and the regional trade organizations are marked, to explain it with the words of Michel Virally, by two ideas, that of competition and that of domestic jurisdiction (chasse gardée), but not by that of collaboration. Regional groups pursue a defensive strategy, in avoiding that trade exchanges among the group members might be subject to the universal norms governing international trade, namely the MFN rule. The increased strictness of rules and procedures of the universal system deriving from the establishment of the WTO could only have the result of intensifying the defensive strategies on the part of the regional groups and of multiplying them.

This essay finally deals with the assessment of the WTO as a truly universal organization. According to the conclusions reached in paragraph 5, the axiom of the WTO universality is tenable only considering the twofold essence of this international organization, within which the two paradigms of multilateralism and regionalism coexist. The WTO legal order holds indeed both demands for non-discriminatory treatment and demands for regional preferences as either of these trade patterns ultimately concurs in the liberalization of world trade.

Keywords: IEL, WTO, FTAs, Multilateralism, Regionalism, International Organization