Negotiating a Plurilateral Agreement on Trade in Services

This paper analyses the ongoing plurilateral negotiations for a new Agreement on Trade in Services. Its aim is to answer to the following set of questions: (1) What are the motivations behind these negotiations as well as the objectives of the new plurilateral trade in services agreement? How will the architecture of the new agreement look like? (2) What are the interests involved in negotiating this new plurilateral agreement on trade in services? and (3) How will it fit into the multilateral trading system revolving around the WTO? According to the findings of the paper, the new deal that is promoted by 23 like-minded WTO Members, including the EU, is a policy response to disappointment over the protracted multilateral talks and the very impasse of the Doha Round. Yet, the stakes on negotiating an ambitious market opening for services are quite high, given the importance of services in international trade and particularly their crucial role in global production networks, that dominate nowadays global production, trade and investments.