The WTO Decision-Making Process : Problems and Possible Solutions

The WTO has become one of the key international organisations responsible for regulating international economic relations among states. At first glance, the WTO Agreement makes very democratic provisions with respect to decision-making. All formal WTO decision-making organs are open to all members. Independent of population size, economic might or contribution to international trade, each member of the WTO wields a single unweighted vote – i.e. one-member-one-vote. Thus at the formal level, all appears to bode well with the WTO decision-making process. This seeming well-being however does not show the true nature of the problems and challenges the decision-making process is encumbered with. The article undertakes a descriptive and analytical exegesis of the provisions on decision-making in Articles IX and X of the WTO Agreement. The article is segmented into three main sections. The first section presents a descriptive account of the WTO as an international organisation and the textual provisions on decision-making contained under Articles IX and X of the WTO Agreement. The focus here is to explore the formal provisions on ‘legislative’ decisionmaking by the two most important decision-making organs of the WTO – i.e. the Ministerial Conference and the General Council. The second section presents a critical analysis of the WTO decision-making process with particular emphasis on the problems, challenges and opportunities that the consensus and single undertaking principles and the Green Room process hold for the WTO. The concluding section explores possible options for reforming the WTO decision-making process. The importance of the principles of sovereign equality of states and the special and differential treatment of developing countries are used in both the second and third sections as key considerations in the discourse on the challenges and possible reform of the WTO decision-making process