On 27 November 2019, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) marked the 30th-anniversary of the Trade Policy Review Mechanism (TPRM), a critical tool for ensuring and promoting transparency, accountability and predictability in the multilateral trading system.

In his opening remarks at a conference to mark the event, WTO Director-General Roberto Azevêdo said this milestone is an opportunity to celebrate a success story but also to look at how the TPRM can adapt and respond to a changing trading system.

“This is a real success story for the WTO. We have accomplished a lot in the last 30 years, and I am sure we can do even more,” Mr Azevêdo said. “If the TPRM did not exist, we would have to invent something like it. Yet as with any system created by humans, there is room for improvement. We need to ensure that the mechanism can respond to changes in the global economy.”

He added that: “Today, trade is far more multi-faceted than it was a generation ago. Global value chains bring together flows of goods, services, investment and people. Nearly two-thirds of traded goods are made with components from at least two different countries. Advances in technology, such as e-commerce or artificial intelligence, are revolutionising the way we trade. These pose new questions both for the broader trading system and for how the TPR mechanism should evolve.”

Mr Azevêdo expressed hope that participants' conversations would generate ideas that would help members enable the TPRM to be as effective for the next 30 years as it has been in the past.

Looking back three decades, Mr Azevêdo noted that the decision of the contracting parties to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) to establish the TPRM in April 1989 was, in itself, a “quite revolutionary” response to changing economic circumstances, as for the first time sovereign governments had agreed to submit their national trade policies and practices to a regular process of multilateral surveillance and peer-review.

The new mechanism, which at first was implemented on a provisional basis was confirmed as an integral part of the WTO in 1994, in Annex 3 of the Marrakesh Agreement. Following the establishment of the WTO in 1995, the scope of reviews was expanded beyond goods to cover services and trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights.

More than 500 reviews have been conducted under the Trade Policy Review Body over the past 30 years, covering 157 of the 164 WTO members.

Australia, Morocco and the United States were the first three members subject to this peer-review and transparency process, and their Trade Policy Review reports were distributed on 16 November 1989.