WTO 의사결정절차의 문제점과 해결방안

The WTO has become one of the key international organizations responsible for regulating international economic relations among states. At first glance, the WTO Agreement makes very democratic provisions with respect to decision-making. All formal WTO decision-making organs are open to all members. Independent of population size, economic might or contribution to international trade, each member of the WTO wieldes a single unweighted vote- i.e. one-member-one-vote. Thus seeming well-being however believes the true nature of the problems and descriptive and analytical exegesis of the provisions on decision-making in Article Ⅸ and Ⅹ of the WTO Agreement. The article is segmented into three main sections. The first section presents a descriptive account of the WTO as an international organisation and the textual provisions on decision-making contained under Articles Ⅸ and Ⅹ of the WTO Agreement. The focus here is to explore the formal provisions on 'legislative' decision-making by the two most important decision-making organs of the WTO- i.e. the Ministerial Conference and the General Council. The second section presents a critical analysis of the WTO decision-making process with particular emphasis on the problems, challenges and opportunities that the consensus and single undertaking pinciples and the Green Room process hold for the WTO. The concluding section explores possible options for reforming the WTO decision-making process. The importance of the principles of sovereign equality of state and the special and differential treatment of developing countries are used in both the second and third sections as key considerations in the discourse on the challenges and possible reform of the WTO decision-making process.