ABSTRACT

Three trade issues of the second half of the 1980s and the first years of the 1990s suggest that the multilateral organisations, particularly those dealing with trade, will need to adapt to new types of member and to a new international economic structure:

• in some regions or sub-regions, the share of intra-regional trade has increased strongly;

• the number of active regional trading areas has increased at an unprecedented rate;

• the EC, unlike previous regional groups, in some circumstances behaves within international organisations as one member or negotiator, rather than a group of members with certain common or collective interests.