Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Preface
- Table of cases
- Abbreviations
- PART I Introduction and General Considerations
- PART II The WTO Dispute Settlement System: Its Processes and Its Institutions
- PART III The WTO Dispute Settlement System: Systemic and Other Issues
- 12 The role of lawyers in the WTO dispute settlement system
- 13 Jurisdiction in WTO dispute settlement
- 14 Due process in WTO disputes
- 15 Standards of review in WTO panel proceedings
- 16 Administration of evidence in WTO dispute settlement proceedings
- 17 Confidentiality issues under the DSU: fact-finding process versus confidentiality
- 18 Panels' consultations with scientific experts
- 19 Amicus curiae participation in WTO dispute settlement: reflections on the past decade
- 20 Suspension of concessions and retaliation under the Agreement on Safeguards: the recent US – Steel Safeguards case
- 21 Compliance with WTO dispute settlement decisions: is there a crisis?
- 22 DSU review: a view from the inside
- PART IV Annexes
21 - Compliance with WTO dispute settlement decisions: is there a crisis?
from PART III - The WTO Dispute Settlement System: Systemic and Other Issues
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Preface
- Table of cases
- Abbreviations
- PART I Introduction and General Considerations
- PART II The WTO Dispute Settlement System: Its Processes and Its Institutions
- PART III The WTO Dispute Settlement System: Systemic and Other Issues
- 12 The role of lawyers in the WTO dispute settlement system
- 13 Jurisdiction in WTO dispute settlement
- 14 Due process in WTO disputes
- 15 Standards of review in WTO panel proceedings
- 16 Administration of evidence in WTO dispute settlement proceedings
- 17 Confidentiality issues under the DSU: fact-finding process versus confidentiality
- 18 Panels' consultations with scientific experts
- 19 Amicus curiae participation in WTO dispute settlement: reflections on the past decade
- 20 Suspension of concessions and retaliation under the Agreement on Safeguards: the recent US – Steel Safeguards case
- 21 Compliance with WTO dispute settlement decisions: is there a crisis?
- 22 DSU review: a view from the inside
- PART IV Annexes
Summary
Conferences and symposia on the World Trade Organization (WTO) have been proliferating in connection with the organization's tenth anniversary, with a particular focus on the WTO dispute settlement system – how it is working, what difficulties have arisen, how its rules might evolve, etc. These events typically feature a certain amount of hand-wringing over the fact that adopted WTO dispute settlement decisions have only a limited, indirect influence on the subsequent behaviour of losing respondents, and sometimes are not implemented promptly or at all. Some observers have gone so far as to proclaim the existence of a ‘compliance crisis’, with potentially ruinous consequences for the WTO and the trading system more generally.
This chapter contains observations on the compliance issue in four sections. Section 1 gives an overall perspective on the compliance record. Section 2 discusses factors that may underlie occasional non-compliance. Section 3 argues that non-compliance on the scale and of the type observed so far does not qualify as a ‘crisis’. Section 4 briefly suggests some criteria for how one might expect WTO Members to behave if they conclude in the future that a real compliance crisis has arisen.
Overall record of compliance, including US compliance
Several quantitative analyses have been done in this area, and I will not seek to repeat or improve on them here. The story they tell is not calamitous.
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- Key Issues in WTO Dispute SettlementThe First Ten Years, pp. 242 - 250Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005
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