Introduction:
WTO is an international body founded in 1995 to encourage international trade and economic development by reducing tariffs and other restrictions.This organization deals with regulation of trade between participating countries; it provides an outline for negotiating and formalizing trade agreements, and a dispute resolution process. WTO's current Director-General is Pascal Lamy, who leads a staff of over 600 people in Geneva, Switzerland.
Agreements:
The WTO oversees about 60 different agreements which have the status of international legal texts. Member countries must sign and approve all WTO agreements on there consent. A discussion of some of the most important agreements takes place. The Agreement on Agriculture(AoA) came into being with the founding of the WTO in 1995. The AoA has three main concepts: * domestic support,(the boxes) * market access , * export subsidies. The General Agreement on Trade in Services was created to extend the multilateral trading system to service sector, in the same way as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) provided a system for merchandise trade. The agreement entered into force in January 1995. The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights puts down minimum standards for many forms of intellectual property (IP) regulation. It was negotiated at the end of the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1994. Domestic support: the boxes
The first pillar of the AoA is "domestic support". The WTO Agreement on Agriculture negotiated in the Uruguay Round (1986–1994) includes the classification of subsidies into ‘boxes’ depending on their effects on production and trade: * amber (most directly linked to production levels) * blue (production-limiting programmes that still distort trade), * green (causing not more than minimal distortion of trade or production). While payments in the