. /.  WORLD TRADE  
ORGANIZATION  TN/RL/W/152 
26 April 2004  
 
(04-1850) 
Negotiating Group on Rules Original:   English 
   
SUBMISSION ON REGIONAL TRADE AGREEMENTS 
 
Paper by Chile
 
   The following submission, dated 23 April 2004, is being circulated at the request of the 
Delegation of Chile. 
_______________ 
 
 
GATS ARTICLE V 
 
1. Paragraph 29 of the Doha Ministerial Declarati on gives us a mandate to clarify and improve 
“existing WTO provisions applying to regional trad e agreements”.  The term “regional trade 
agreements” refers to “all bilatera l, regional and plurilateral trade agreement of a preferential nature”.
1 
It is obvious that we are dealing not only with GA TT Article XXIV but also with GATS Article V.   
2. The Committee on Regional Trade Agreements discussed some systemic issues on Article V. 
Those discussions are reflected in the Compendium  of issues prepared by the Secretariat of the 
WTO.2 Although Australia and the EC3 identified this as a key issue at the beginning of this 
negotiation, we have not st arted substantive nor transparency discussions yet.  
3. GATS Article V enables its members to be party to, or to enter into preferential agreements 
on trade in services provided they comply with a numb er of substantive and procedural requirements.  
The basic conditions are: 
• Substantial sectoral coverage: This conditi on is to be understood in terms of number 
of services sectors, volume of trade affected and modes of supply. The agreement should not exclude a priori  any mode of supply.  
 
• Limitation of substantially all discriminati on among its parties in the sectors it covers, 
by eliminating existing measures and or preventing the introduction of new 
discrimination within a reasonable time frame. 
 
• The agreement should not raise the overall le vel of barriers to members outside those 
FTAs. 
 
4. A general question that might be explored is possible similarities between GATT Article 
XXIV and GATS Article V.  These similarities should be analyzed not only with respect to the 
transparency mechanism but also w ith respect to various substantive issues (such as “substantially all 
the trade” v/s “substantial sectoral coverage”; “lev el of duties and other regulation of commerce” v/s 
“level of barriers”, “reasonable time–frames” etc.). 
                                                     
 
1 Document WT/L/127. 
2 Document TN/RL/W/8/Rev.1. 
3 TN/RL/W/2  and TN/RL/W/14 respectively. TN/RL/W/152 
Page 2  
 
5. We also should analyze and clarify, in particular, the following substantive issues
4: 
“substantial sectoral coverage” (Article V.1(a)) a nd how to assess it; “elimination of substantially all 
discrimination”, “reasonable time-frame” and how to address discriminatory measures on market 
access as defined in Article XVI (Article V.1(b)); meaning of “wider process of economic integration”(Article V.2); flexibility for developing  countries (Article V.3(a)); requirements to avoid 
rising “the overall level of barriers trade in services” (Article V.4) and how to asses  it; meaning of 
substantive business operations” (Article V.6).  
6. With respect to transparency issues, a partic ular aspect that could be analyzed is the 
obligation of notification of Recognition Agreements  between members of a RTAs, within the context 
of those RTAs (GATS Article VII and GATS Article V). 
7. Due to the fact that we will start in-depth discussions on several substantive issues, Chile 
wants Article V to be clarified and improved and ther efore, we would like it to be included in the 
“road map” for such discussions. 
 
__________ 
 
   
                                                     
 
4 The list of issues raised is non-exhaustive, and is  without prejudice of Chilean position on the subject. 