Keeping Regionalism under Control of the Multilateral Trading System: State of Play and Prospects

The rapid increase in regional trade agreements (RTAs) is a noticeable trend in international trade today. There have been more than 350 RTAs in force notified to the World Trade Organization (WTO), and this number will grow over time. The worldwide proliferation of regional arrangements has provoked a lot of discussions about its implications for the multilateral trading system. Some would underscore the complimentary nature of RTAs, others would indicate negative effects on the multilateral trade regime, with none of these views being able to uniformly reflect the complexity of the current picture of world trade. The purpose of this article is to revisit the WTO tools designed to keep regionalism within its reach. We will evaluate the state of play in three areas of the WTO domain - rule-making, multilateral review and dispute settlement - and see if there is any room for improvement of WTO's "control" functions in each of these fields.