The Uruguay round of the GATT agreement, which was eventually concluded in Marrakesh in April 1994, was subject to lengthy and tortuous negotiations.

The achievements in some areas are certainly remarkable.

There is little doubt that they will generate increased commercial activity, and that this will in turn provide work for those members of the legal profession who specialise in international trading matters.A framework of rules for the orderly conduct of international trade came into being when the original GATT was set up in 1947.

Its success can be measured against the following statistic.

In 1947 the industrialised countries imposed tariffs on the goods which they imported of around 40% on average.

By 1986, when the Uruguay round began, tariffs on goods imported by the same countries had on average fallen to around 5%.A significant factor in this success is the progress made by the expansion of the EU, which has eliminated import duties entirely on the movement of goods between its member states.

But GATT took an enormous step forward with the conclusion of the Uruguay round, as it has for the first time been put on to a permanent basis.

The setting up of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) not only provides a common institutional basis, but ends the provisional state of affairs which had previously prevailed.As the importance of the manufacturing industry declines, the service sector has come to play an ever greater role in the economies of the developed world.

It was not entirely fortuitous that when, in 1973, value added tax replaced purchase tax, the charge to tax was imposed not only on a wider range of goods but also, for the first time, on a wide range of services.

This provided an immense injection of revenue for the Exchequer, and revenue has continued to rise as the service sector in the UK has expanded.

The GATT principles will now be applied to services through the medium of a general agreement on trade in services (GATS).

The intention is to achieve uniform treatment for all trading partners, eliminating as far as possible all discrimination in this area.One of the key areas of international trade in the post war era has been the textile industry, upon which many developing countries have based their export sectors.

This has traditionally been controlled by the multifibre arrangement, which established a series of bilateral trading agreements between countries of export and countries of import.

The developed countries have tended to control imports by means of quotas, but at Marrakesh the signatories agreed to phase out the multifibre arrangement over a ten-year period.

The intention is to bring trade in textiles back into the GATT system during that time.The developing exporters of textiles have agreed to reduce their own restrictions on importations from the developed world, whose own consumers should in turn benefit from reduced prices at the point of retail.

This may gradually reduce the friction which administration of quotas has produced as importers and their agents race to beat closures or are forced to alter destination while goods are still in transit.

It is unlikely, however, that difficulties over origin will diminish.

While rules to control unfair trade are being strengthened, false certification will undoubtedly continue while the principles of origin qualification remain as complex as they are today.Service industries are not alone in being brought into the world trading system for the first time.

Agriculture also comes within the ambit of the GATT system, although some of the provisions appear rather piecemeal.Initially, 3% of domestic markets are to be opened to agricultural products, a figure which is to rise to 5% by 1999.

Progress is only slightly greater in the area of subsidies.

Dome stic support is to be reduced by 20% from the levels reached in 1986 to 1988.

The volume of subsidised exports is to be cut by 21% from the average levels of the period 1986 to 1990, and expenditure on export subsidies is to be reduced by 36% in respect of the same period.

Nevertheless, agriculture remains an area of intense production and high subsidisation, and as such gives rise to an enormous amount of evasion of control and fraudulent claim to benefits.

Many countries achieve the greater part of their GNP from food products and this situation is unlikely to alter.Progress is also reflected in the area of intellectual property rights.

These have burgeoned over the last three decades as the topics of patents, copyright (including design copyright), confidentiality and, to some extent, trade marks have come into their own after many years of slumber.

The spread of information technology in particular has called for new forms of protection - an obvious example is the modification of the copyright system to cater for computer programs, something which was still a matter of doubt as recently as ten years ago.Although there have for some time been unilateral rules calling for minimum standards of protection, the question of enforcement has often fallen behind the existence of legal provision.

This had been particularly true in counterfeiting, where the copyright provision of the international copyright conventions has not stamped out these practices.

This spells some danger for the World Intellectual Property Organisation, which administers a number of the more established conventions such as the Berne Copyright Union.

Already the EU has framed a draft Directive on copyright with the intention of achieving harmony in the subject among the EU member states.

If the WTO also produces a copyright system which eradicates counterfeiting then there is likely to be intense competition for adherents.

But the advances will not be confined to copyright - there will be increased patent protection in certain areas, for example for pharmaceutical products.A feature of the procedures introduced by the Uruguay round which will be of particular interest to lawyers is the dispute resolution procedure.

This is done at an inter-governmental level, and therefore constitutes an important development in international law.The first step is for a complaint to be lodged, following which there is a request for consultation with the state which is involved.

If the application of good offices and conciliation fails to bring about an agreement, then a formal complaint is to be made to the new Dispute Settlement Board.

The next step is the establishment of a panel, which may take the advice of both specialists, and interested third parties.

The panel can produce an interim - and must produce a final - report.The normal time scale is six months, but in the case of perishable goods this is reduced to three months.

If there is no appeal, there follows a ruling on adoption and recommendations are made.

But if the decision is not acceptable to one of the parties, it may request that an appellate body be convened, and that it gives a decision.

Like all tribunals which apply principles of international law between independent member states, its decisions will be wholly subject to its jurisdiction being accepted by the states concerned.

To this extent it will be a yardstick of the progress which supranational institutions are making in bringing about harmonious resolutions between sovereign states.