ABSTRACT
The Doha Round began with the WTO Doha Ministerial Declaration of 14 November 2001 (WTO, 2001). This negotiation was launched with the intention of ensuring that developing countries, and especially the least developed, received ‘a share in the growth of world trade commensurate with the needs of their economic development’ (WTO, 2001). The Declaration established a work programme of approximately 21 subjects, a number of which were to be negotiated formally on the basis of a single undertaking. These subjects mainly included agriculture, services, non-agricultural market access (NAMA), WTO rules, regional trade agreements and environment, as well as certain aspects of the implementation of Uruguay Round Agreements and the TRIPs Agreement. The Doha Declaration also included four subjects – investment, competition policy, government procurement, and trade facilitation (the so-called Singapore issues) – for later inclusion on the basis of the single undertaking, but the first three later failed to receive consensus and were dropped from the negotiation (WTO, 2006a).
