L'absence d'une définition précise de la notion de pays en développement à l'OMC : un handicap pour son fonctionnement

Abstract

Dans cet article, nous nous intéressons aux conséquences de l’absence d’une définition précise de la notion de pays en développement (PED) à l’Organisation mondiale du commerce (OMC). Les négociations engagées dans le cadre du cycle de Doha depuis 2001 ne peuvent, à notre sens, trouver une issue que par la meilleure prise en compte de l’hétérogénéité de ce groupe de pays, laquelle passe par une différenciation renforcée et évolutive entre PED. Ceci suppose de définir un nouveau traitement spécial et différencié afin que de faible et dilué, celui-ci devienne un atout par son efficacité et sa légitimité accrues au service des pays qui en ont le plus besoin.

Developing country status in the WTO: investigating self-designation and perpetuation of the “pretend” culture

“…As matters currently stand, neither the GATT nor the WTO have in place a formal set of criteria (Duboz and Houser, 2013) delineating what “developed” means or who falls within the category of a “developing” country. It is up to each member to announce as such, although other members are entitled to challenge the decision of a member to make use of provisions available to developing countries [4].…”

“…Since there is no institutional reprieve as yet, proposed reforms should serve to narrow the applicability of SDT to engage a focused target audience so that preferential treatment is reaped by the intended beneficiaries. The key issue of a real differentiation between developing countries thus arises with more acuity (Duboz and Houser, 2013, p. 124), and the challenge lies in discerning how to ensure that only the appropriate members have access to this key. Limit the practice of developing-country self-declaration. …”

“…The logic behind its suggestion is straightforward – if a member country is wealthy enough based on global income and trade indicators, then it should not be allowed access to SDT, which has traditionally been optimized by vulnerable developing members. To test the efficacy of the USA’s proposal, and supposing that these reforms are implemented, the WTO would see the result of 30 countries falling into at least one of these categories (Gonzaléz, 2019a, 2019b), with large economies such as Russia, Brazil, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia being excluded (Duboz and Houser, 2013, p. 123). More specifically, should condition iii) be applied, Singapore and Brunei would be knocked out as SDT beneficiaries since they have been classified by the World Bank as “high income” countries [12].…”

“…In the EU, the Appellate Body in EC – Tariff Preferences recognized in 2004 that the function of the Enabling Clause was to permit WTO members to provide differential and more favourable treatment to developing countries in spite of the most-favoured nation obligation enshrined in Article I:1 of the GATT [13]. Following the EU’s adoption of its new regulations in 2012 that worked towards the granting of tariff preferences to developing countries in a differentiated manner whilst respecting the equal treatment of beneficiaries, it can be seen that the standard generalized system of preferences (GSP), GSP+ and everything but arms schemes function to exclude countries classified by the World Bank as having “high” or “upper middle income” per capita from the preferential benefits initiative (Duboz and Houser, 2013, p. 123). In this sense, differentiating factors based on income lend to the proposition that prominent powerhouses would indeed be precluded from availing themselves of SDT, thus recalibrating power asymmetries and entrenched inequalities.…”

“…Over and above this limitation, an associated drawback is that the proposal contradicts Article XXXVI – Art. XXXVIII of the GATT which embeds SDT as a fundamental acquis for developing countries (Kwa and Lunenborg, 2019, p. 3), while ignoring the overarching WTO rationale that relations between developing countries and developed countries must be unbalanced (Duboz and Houser, 2013, p. 116). On balance, the proposal to place limits on the practice of self-declaration based purely on economic indicators is flawed.…”