The Development of the WTO – Remarks on the Sutherland Report

Published on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the World Trade Organization, the so-called Sutherland Report was to address institutional challenges in the new millennium. This commentary analyzes the report's underlying notion of the organization's self-understanding and critically scrutinizes this approach. The report provides some interesting ideas on how to develop the WTO, yet at the same time, it appears as fully rooted in WTO orthodoxy and very much satisfied with the evolutionary path the WTO has taken. The commentary concludes that the report would have been even more useful if it had been drafted by a bolder, more representative and more critical board