General Agreement on Trade in Services
General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS)An international agreement on trade in services, arrived at in 1994 as part of the Uruguay Round of negotiations under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The GATS is very limited in scope: it is a long way from providing for world-wide market access and ‘national’, that is, non-discriminatory treatment for foreign providers of services. Its provisions apply only to services included by members in a positive list: this is around half of all services in high-income countries and a very small proportion elsewhere. Even within these positive lists there are numerous exceptions. As with the GATT, a prolonged series of further negotiations seems likely to be needed before anything approaching free trade in services is achieved.
[The entire page is 136 words long]
Join eNotes
Over 3,500 study guides, question and answer forums, literature criticism, reference content, and much more!
Oxford University Press Titles
