If a state was not previously a Contracting Party to the GATT, it can become a WTO member by
accession under Article XII of the WTO Agreement, which states:
1- ‘Any State or separate customs territory possessing full autonomy in the conduct of its external commercial relations and of the other matters provided for in this Agreement and the Multilateral Trade Agreements may accede to this Agreement, on terms to be agreed between it and the WTO. Such accession shall apply to this Agreement and the Multilateral Trade Agreements annexed thereto’. 2 - ‘Decisions on accession shall be taken by the Ministerial Conference. The Ministerial Conference shall approve the agreement on the terms of accession by a two-thirds majority of the Members of the WTO’.
3 - ‘Accession to a Plurilateral Trade Agreement shall be governed by the provisions of that Agreement’.
So, a state or customs territory that wants to become a WTO Member through accession has
to “negotiate the terms of accession with the current Members”138
. Therefore, the ticket of
admission has to be negotiated. The “subjects of the accession negotiations are the market access
commitments and the concessions the candidate for membership has to make”139. However, the
137 Ibid. Article XIV. 138 Basra 2008. 139
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candidate state must agree to the terms of the WTO Agreement and multilateral trade
agreements without negotiations140.
Accession to the WTO proceeds is through four phases. The first phase is known as ‘tell us
about yourself’. In this phase, the State or customs territory applying for membership has to create a report that shows all “aspects of its trade and economic policies”141 which relate to the
duties under the WTO agreements. Then the application142 for accession is examined by the
WTO working party143. The second phase starts when the working party sees “satisfactory
progress with its examination of the trade and economic policies”144
. This is known as the ‘work
out with us individually what you have to offer’ phase. In this stage, the parallel bilateral negotiations begin between the applicant for membership and current members. The “new
Member’s market access commitments and concessions”145
must “apply equally to ‘all WTO
Members as a result of the MFN treatment obligation”146.
The third phase of the accession process will start once the parallel bilateral market access
negotiations between individual members and the candidate for membership have
successfully concluded. In this stage, the ‘let’s draft membership terms’ phase, the candidate country accepts the terms of accession set by the working party in a report that contains “a
140
All state or customs territories will instantly receive WTO benefits, such as a reduction of barriers to trade and increased market access, when they acceded to the WTO. See, Basra 2008.
141 Basra 2008. For more details, see, World Trade Organization 2015, Understanding the WTO: The
Organization Membership, alliances and bureaucracy| How to join the WTO: the accession process, available
from: http://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/tif_e/org3_e.htm [viewed February1, 2015].
142 See, Accession: Becoming a Member of the WTO, Cancun WTO Ministerial 2003 Briefing Notes, available
from: www.wto.ork/english/thewto-e/minist-e/min03-.e/brieLefbrien3-e.htm [viewed September 2012]. 143 The working party of the WTO was created to deal with the request for membership accession. 144
For more details, see, World Trade Organization 2015, How to join the WTO: the accession process,
available from: http://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/tif_e/org3_e.htm [viewed February1, 2015].
145 See, World Trade Organization 2015, How to join the WTO: the accession process, available from:
http://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/tif_e/org3_e.htm [viewed February1, 2015].
146
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draft membership treaty (‘protocol of accession’) and lists (‘Schedules’) of the market access commitments and concessions of the candidate for membership”147 and the report is
submitted to the general council or the ministerial conference. In the fourth and final phase,
the ‘decision’ phase, the ministerial conference or the general council must agree on the application for membership or determine if agreement will not be achieved, by a “two-thirds
majority of WTO Members”148. In the positive decision, the “candidate for membership accedes to the WTO thirty days after it has deposited its instrument of ratification of the
membership treaty.
In general, accession negotiations are always long. For example,149 Algeria’s accession
negotiations went from 1947 to 1995 and the WTO were severely criticized as a result150. The
reason for delays in the accession negotiations was not only “hard bargaining on the part of WTO Members or political factors”151
but also because of “the tardy supply of information
and making of the necessary policy adjustments on the part of the candidate for
membership”152
. In fact, applying the WTO agreements required important changes and time
in the WTO Member legislation and practices. So, it could take some years to “draft, approve and apply the new legislation required for accession to the WTO”153
. Some least-developed
countries specifically lacked “the administrative capacity to conduct the complex negotiations and to develop and apply the necessary changes in national legislation and practices”154
. In
147 See, World Trade Organization 2015, How to join the WTO: the accession process, available from:
http://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/tif_e/org3_e.htm [viewed February1, 2015].
148 Ibid.
149 See, the WTO website. The World Trade Organization (WTO): Accessions, available at
https://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/acc_e/acc_e.htm [viewed March 2, 2015].
150 Matsushita et al. 2003. 151 Ibid. 152 Ibid. 153 Ibid. 154 Ibid.
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December 2002, therefore, the General Council accepted “guidelines to facilitate the accession of least-developed countries to the WTO, in accordance with a mandate given at
the Doha Session of the Ministerial Conference in November 2001”155. These “guidelines concern, inter alia, technical assistance and capacity-building”156.