Saving the Right to Appeal at the WTO : The EU and the Multi-Party Interim Appeal Arbitration Arrangement

Since May 2016, the United States of America has been vetoing the selection of the members of the WTO Appellate Body, alleging procedural and substantive criticisms on the activity of the Standing Tribunal. Consequently, at midnight of 10 December 2019 the World Trade Court ceased to be operational, as only Zhao Hong, the Chinese judge, remained in office. Faced with such an unprecedented WTO institutional crisis, the EU has chosen to be a major actor in the reform process of the multilateral appellate review mechanism. Beyond presenting important institutional proposals to amend Article 17 of the DSU, which have been highly considered in the Walker Principles, the EU launched a very interesting temporary solution to preserve appeals in Geneva, the Multi-Party Interim Appeal Arbitration Arrangement (MPIA), which is based on the autonomous alternative dispute settlement means already referred to in Article 25 of the DSU. After the consideration of the features of this provision, the present article analyses how the EU suggested, developed, and progressively gained support for its MPIA project within the WTO community, illustrating the main aspects of the temporary appeals arbitration arrangement and taking into account the objections the US started to raise against some aspects of the important interim procedure