Plus obligations in WTO law

Since the establishment of World Trade Organization in 1995, 33 governments have acceded to the WTO pursuant to accession process under Article XII of the WTO Agreement. According to WTO accession provision, acceding members must accept the terms of the WTO Agreement and all Multilateral Trade Agreements. In addition, Article XII further requires applicants to negotiate certain terms with existing WTO Members. However, WTO accession provision neither prescribes the principles for accession negotiations nor specifies the details of the „terms“ that are to be agreed between acceding members and the WTO. In reality, it has been noticed that the existing WTO Members prefer to impose on the new members obligations that are more stringent than those applying to the existing members. As to date, no comprehensive study to observe all the WTO-Plus obligations has been undertaken yet. Researchers are mostly focused on particular commitments made in China's Protocol on the Accession, and no one has made an effort to detail all the WTO-Plus obligations among all acceding members. In this regard, this thesis will introduce the WTO-Plus obligations and find out all the plus obligations. Due to the unique features of the plus obligations, it is necessary to analyze the relationship between the WTO-Plus obligations and other WTO rules. The thesis will also raise the important questions regarding WTO-Plus obligations and try to answer them.