ABSTRACT
Article XIX of the GATT and the WTO Agreement on Safeguards allow a WTO Member in certain circumstances to suspend WTO concessions where increases in imports cause serious injury or threat of injury to domestic industries of a product like, or competitive with, one whose importation is increasing. 2 The increase in imports must be caused by unforeseen developments and prior WTO obligations. Measures taken under Article XIX and the Agreement on Safeguards are intended to be temporary, lasting only long enough to prevent or remedy the injury, and are applied in a non-discriminatory way to all Parties exporting the product. Finally, they can only be undertaken when Parties with substantial interests have been consulted and agree to the import restraint or receive adequate compensation in the form of offsetting trade concessions. 3
Between January 1995 and October 2009, 208 safeguard investigation initiations were reported to the WTO Committee on Safeguards, as required by Article 12.1 of the Agreement on Safeguards. The number of safeguard investigation initiations per year varied between 8 to 27 in the years between 2005 and 2009, less than the high of 36 in 2002. 4 The proportion of cases initiated by developed countries was 17 % in the period 1995-2005. 5 Compared with other trade remedies, especially dumping, safeguard actions are infrequently initiated: between 1995 and 2008, 3,427 antidumping initiations were reported to the Committee 6 and 197 countervailing actions 7 were reported to the WTO.
