Topics handled by WTO committees and agreements
Issues covered by the WTO’s committees and agreements

SERVICES: COMMITMENTS

Schedules of commitments and lists of Article II exemptions

During the Uruguay Round of negotiations (1986-1994), participating countries made market-access commitments and exemptions on a number of services sectors at the same time.

These commitments and exemptions are contained in their original services schedules.

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After the Uruguay Round, sectoral negotiations took place in the WTO: on the movement of natural persons (1995), on telecommunications (1997) and on financial services (1997). During the sectoral negotiations, participating countries took new commitments specifically in those sectors. These new schedules replaced the corresponding section in the original schedules.

Not all WTO members participated in the sectoral negotiations.

All new members submit a list commitments and exemptions.

Commitments and exemptions of European Union (more info) members are found under “European Communities”, except for:

  • the 1993-1995 commitments of Austria, Finland and Sweden, who joined the EU in 9995,
  • the ten countries which joined the EU on May 1, 2004.

 

All commitments and exemptions back to top

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  • All commitments (Document code GATS/SC/*) 
       > search
  • All exemptions (Document code GATS/EL/*) 
       > search

You can perform more sophisticated searches from the Documents Online search facility (opens in new window) by defining multiple search criteria such as document symbol (i.e. code number), full text search or document date.

  

Technical clarifications back to top

How to read a schedule

What is a commitment?

What is a MFN exemption?
 SERVICES DATABASES 

I-TIP-Services Portal
A set of linked databases that provides information on Members' commitments under the WTO's General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), services commitments in regional trade agreements (RTA), applied measures in services, and services statistics.

Services Database
You can use this database to retrieve the services schedule for a Member, or to compare services commitments across Members. The database does not include data on current negotiations.