The Relation Between the Marrakesh System and Regional Trade Agreements in the WTO Case-Law

While the World Trade Organization (WTO) system is the pillar of international trade, its difficulties to deepen and widen the multilateral trade discipline to meet the growing needs of a constantly more interconnected, sophisticated and articulated world economy have provoked the negotiations of many Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs), in particular of mega-deals or mega-regionals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), or the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). The positive WTO rules concerning RTAs -i.e. Article XXIV of the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) 1994, paragraphs 2(c) and 3(a) of the Enabling Clause, and Article V of the GATS (General Agreement on Trade in Services)- have inspired much controversy, generated quite considerable uncertainty, and consequently have not been fully implemented. Therefore, the practice is far from producing satisfying mechanisms coordinating the multilateral and regional systems. The case-law, in particular, the WTO case-law, concerning the relations between WTO and RTAs systems becomes thus essential to provide for a clearer legal picture on the interaction of universal and regional trade rules, and so endow with a certain level of predictability the economic operators, stakeholders and civil society, and, more generally, all the interested and involved international actors. Such a contribution of clarity is nowadays particularly precious, because of the already emphasized unprecedented proliferation of RTAs having WTO Members as Contracting Parties. The present article hence intends to analyze the existing WTO case-law on the topic. In fact, in spite of being really few, the WTO reports have already fixed some important principles also on the relation between treaty-systems, suggesting how to harmoniously combine the WTO and RTAs substantive and institutional-procedural rules. It is a privilege and honour to dedicate this work to Prof. Ugo Villani, who is a rare International Law Scholar with huge and deep knowledge of the many fields of International Law and EU Law, always generous in contributing and achieving developments and improvements both in the Academia and in public life.