World at your feet

The World Trade Organisation (WTO) is, as your article says (see [2002] Gazette, 25 April, 24), currently an area of practice for only a few lawyers.

However, the scant attention it receives from lawyers is in inverse proportion to its increasing importance.

The WTO agreements represent a huge ceding of sovereignty by the UK and trading blocs such as the EU - ironically much greater, in some respects, than the ceding of sovereignty by the UK to the EU which receives so much media attention.

The bulk of international trade is now governed by the agreements, and therefore by the interpretation put on them by the WTO disputes panels.

Certainly in some of their early cases, the panels seemed more intent on pursuing an ultra-free trade ideology than in allowing member governments to pay proper heed to environmental and other concerns.

Even now, our own government argues, when it suits it, that the WTO agreements prevent it from prohibiting the import of products made in ways we find morally unacceptable - such as child labour or particularly intensive farming methods.

That in turn leads to home producers resisting higher standards because they cannot compete with cheap imports produced under lower standards.

In fact, the agreements give much greater scope than is sometimes thought (as indeed some of the more recent case law shows), but the problem is that only governments (or in our case the EU) can take cases to the panels to test a point.

Non-government organisations and concerned individuals have no direct voice.

An increase in trade can certainly lead to greater overall prosperity and can sometimes benefit poor countries by creating markets for their exports.

However, development charities complain that the rules are heavily skewed in favour of rich countries and their multinational companies and that there is too much emphasis, for example, on protecting traditional intellectual property rights.

As Christian Aid puts it 'competition with much larger foreign competitors can be like pitching your local youth side against Manchester United'.

A rules-based system is clearly better than protectionist anarchy.

However, unless the rules and the way they are applied are seen to protect the most vulnerable communities, and lead to the banning of imports which have been cruelly-produced or threaten the environment, the WTO will never gain public confidence.

As ever, lawyers have an opportunity of shaping the debate.

We should not leave it to a handful of trade specialists - the WTO's reach is far longer than mere trade.

David Thomas, solicitor, Chobham, Surrey