Industrial design rights in the European Union of industrial design rights is required by the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS, Arts. 25 & 26), to which the European Union is a party. The Regulation on Community designs provides for the recognition of the priority date of an application for design right registration in a country which is either a member of the World Trade Organization or a party to the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property. On 1 January 2008, the European Union became a party to the Geneva Act of the Hague Agreement Concerning the International Registration of Industrial Designs
Labour standards in the World Trade Organization large scale protests outside WTO meetings continue to demonstrate, social issues which concern civil society at large are forming a part of the WTO agenda. Globalisation means that decisions made at the WTO have come to affect everyone's lives, and hence there has been an increase in interest in the goings-on of the WTO by civil society. Allowing NGOs to have a say could increase transparency of the system, put pressure on non-compliant governments and provide specialist knowledge and support. Many organisations such as Oxfam, the International Confederation of Trade Unions and One World have already investigated the link between