The GATT treaty's loophole for free trade areas in Article XXIV has puzzled and deceived prominent scholars, who trace its postwar origins to US aspirations to promote European integration and efforts to persuade developing countries to endorse the Havana Charter. Drawing from archival records, this article shows that in fact US policymakers crafted the controversial provisions of Article XXIV to accommodate a trade treaty they had secretly reached with Canada. As a result, the free trade area exemption was embedded in the GATT–WTO regime, even though neither the Havana Charter nor the US–Canada free trade agreement was ever ratified. Theoretically, the case is an important example of how Cold War exigencies altered the policy ideas of US officials.

The World Trade Organization provides a forum for the settlement of trade disputes arising between its 148 Members. Should consultations fail, the parties may choose to initiate formal proceedings in Geneva, and must do so in preference to taking unilateral action. The dispute settlement rules are presently under review with a view to their clarification and improvement, making this a natural time to ask whether the appropriate strategy has been identified. This article focuses on the functions of compensation in the overall context of WTO remedies. Particular attention is given to the prospects for new disciplines and increased practice connected with the granting of both trade compensation and financial compensation. Also considered is the extent to which financial compensation can and should be linked to reparation in the sense of correcting the injury caused by WTO violations. The discussion is informed by the general international law position, by proposals made during the on-going review process and by emerging dispute settlement practice.

The dispute settlement system of the European Community (EC) is undeniably much more elaborate than that of the World Trade Organization (WTO). The reasons for this are evident. First, unlike the WTO the EC, being a supranational organization, has the competence to adopt legislative and administrative acts in its own right. Democratic principles require that the legality of these acts can be examined by a judicial body. Second, legislative and administrative acts of the EC frequently have a direct impact on EC citizens. It would be contrary to democratic principles if citizens affected by legislative or administrative acts of the EC were not able to have the legality of such measures examined by a judicial body. By way of contrast, the inter-State nature of WTO proceedings is such that its dispute settlement system is exclusively open to WTO Members. Third, the EC institutions are capable of beginning legal proceedings against each other and against EC Member States. In particular, if the EC Commission considers that an EC Member State has failed to fulfill an EC Treaty obligation, it may bring the matter before the ECJ. In WTO law, there is no opportunity for inter-institutional proceedings or proceedings between the WTO and its Members.

This rubric is intended for occasional contributions from on-the-ground practitioners in Geneva and national capitals. Our hope is that this category will inspire other practitioners to submit notes and articles – typically in the range of 2,000 to 10,000 words – to the World Trade Review. As with all notes and articles submitted to the World Trade Review, manuscripts in this category will be reviewed by independent referees. However, the focus is intended to be practice oriented and at least one of the two referees will be a fellow practitioner.

This paper addresses the dispute brought to the World Trade Organization (WTO) by India concerning antidumping duties imposed by the European Communities (EC) on cotton-type bed linen. An earlier complaint brought by India challenged the antidumping duties on a number of points, including the EC practice of ‘zeroing’ for the computation of dumping margins (which had the e.ect of assigning a negative dumping margin a weight of zero when computing a weighted average dumping margin). India prevailed in that dispute, and the EC responded with Council Regulation (EC) No. 1644/2001, amending the original antidumping measure on bed linen from India. India was of the view that the amended measure did not comply with EC obligations under the WTO Antidumping Agreement, and brought the proceeding under Article 21.5 of the DSU that is the subject of this paper.

The following acknowledgement was inadvertently dropped from Donald Maclaren's paper. ‘The role of the WTO in achieving equity and efficiency in international markets for agricultural products’, published in the July 2005 issue of the World Trade Review: