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European Communities (Definition of Treaties) (Agreements concluded under Article XXI GATS) Order 2009

This order is intended to give effect under domestic law to a series of agreements—17 in total—reached with other members of the World Trade Organisation. This is a piece of routine WTO business. It is not related to the ongoing Doha round development agenda, nor is it part of negotiations on trade liberalisation. The agreements have been necessary because of successive enlargements of the EU, first from 12 to 15 member states in 1995 and then to 25 in 2004. In acceding to the EU, the new member states, in order to ensure that they are compliant with European Union law, have had to withdraw some of their existing commitments in trade in services under the WTO General Agreement on Trade in Services—the GATS. Under WTO rules, when countries withdraw commitments, they must offer comparable commitments in other areas, hence the negotiation which has taken place with the 17 other WTO members who considered themselves affected by the commitments withdrawn. There are 17 substantively identical agreements, each setting out the same withdrawals of commitments by the new member states and each setting out the same compensatory adjustments which have been agreed. The agreements are consistent with the WTO principle that commitments which are offered to one member are offered to all: the principle of most favoured nation—or MFN—treatment. These 17 agreements were published in Command Paper 7430 in July 2008. All member states have made some compensatory commitments, and for the original 12 members covered by the EC’s GATS schedule at the end of the Uruguay round, including the UK, these are very minor. Most compensatory commitments are made by the acceding member states. The UK has agreed to take on three commitments: first, that, in line with current legislation, no area of the telecommunications services or computer and related services sector covered by our GATS commitments is reserved to the public sector; secondly, that we should bring forward from our current GATS offer in the Doha round the sectoral offer in telecommunications services, which expands and reclassifies the sub-sectors covered; and, thirdly, that we should also bring forward from our current GATS offer in the Doha round the removal of the cover of an economic needs test in the further sub-sector of integrated engineering services for the temporary movement of highly skilled professionals. The first two commitments are taken by all member states, while the third commitment is taken by the UK. Other member states have also made specific, albeit different, commitments. The agreements themselves are mixed in nature and cover matters falling within both the Community’s and member states’ competence. Such agreements do not take effect automatically in UK law, but the UK is obliged under the EC treaty to give them legal effect. This order is necessary as part of the UK’s domestic approval process of the agreements. It takes advantage of a procedure under Section 1(3) of the European Communities Act 1972 by which such ““mixed agreements”” can be specified by Order in Council as Community treaties, and thereby given legal effect. These agreements have already been considered in the relevant European scrutiny committees, who have given the proposed Council decision implementing the outcome of the negotiations ““conditional”” clearance: that is, conditional on the legal base of the decision being changed properly to reflect the content of the commitments withdrawn by the new member states. I commend the order to the Committee and I beg to move.