World Trade Organization: Establishment, functions, objectives

The establishment of the International Trade Organisation was aimed at completing the process of institutionalisation of the international economic relations. The process began at Bretton Woods in 1944 with the establishment of The International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. This integration entity was planned to become a foundation of the post-war order, and was going to have a broader influence and importance than the economic one. A third pillar of the International Trade Organization has never been established, but that is why the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) came into life. It is one of those agreements, whose nearly fifty-year duration had surpassed even the duration of some states. By carrying out trade negotiations, GATT adopted to new needs. However, the moment its integrity got questioned and such a special idea began to die out, the way was found to preserve the GATT achievements and to have the innovative approach join them. This was done with the establishment of the World Trade Organisation, as an international organisation that manages multilateral agreements in the area of trade (GATT), the trade of services (GATS) and the trade aspects of the intellectual property rights. The institution is of multinational and supranational character. It has its own structure that includes the Ministerial Conferences, the General Council and the Secretariat. The WTO continues a long tradition in GATT of seeking to make decisions not by voting but by consensus, although there are also "circles of decision making" that are gradually narrowing down with the degree of the achieved economic power. The WTO is today a primary concept whose main task is to work on bringing into practice the long-standing idea of free trade. In order to achieve this, it is necessary to abide by the basic principles which the WTO has four of. They are: non-discrimination, reciprocity, market approach and fair competition. If one draws a parallel between a product?s life cycle and GATT?s life, one can understand why GATT itself had reached its peak, but was also gradually surpassed. This is why the establishment of the World Trade Organization was a new opportunity to attain all that that GATT had not managed to attain, and to set new goals for the new century. With the establishment of the WTO, GATT was transformed into an organization, and its scopes were considerably broadened. According to the author, there are several challenges before the WTO. Primarily, the process of solving problems on a multilateral level should be continued. Also facing the still powerful forces fighting for the preservation of protectionism, more pronounced in industrial countries although present in developing ones, should be continued. Even if liberalized non-discriminatory trade and investment policy are achieved, the WTO will maintain its importance as a forum for talks on new areas and issues. Perhaps the biggest challenge in the WTO?s future is to work on further integration of developing countries into the world economic trends. The process of decision making itself is perhaps the best opportunity to show to the developing countries that something has changed, the author concludes.