The New Text of the Agreement on Government Procurement : An Analysis and Assessment

This article describes and analyzes the new, tentatively agreed text of the WTO Agreement on Government Procurement. It compares it to the existing agreement of 1995, offers interpretation of its provisions and discusses its potential implications for the regulation of international government purchasing. The objective of the article is to examine whether it has indeed delivered on its promise, namely to improve the existing agreement and to eliminate any remaining discriminatory measures and practices. To that aim it presents the critique that has been leveled against the provisions of the existing GPA and examines to what extent the flaws detected by this critique have been rectified in the new text. The paper concludes with a scorecard of the new text assessing its allover strengths and weaknesses