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The ongoing dispute settlement crisis in the World Trade Organization (WTO) has threatened to turn the WTO rules-based system into a power-oriented model of international trade governance. Unless the crisis is resolved, the WTO may start losing its relevance as the first-best forum choice for inter-State trade disputes. For many WTO Members, dispute settlement under free trade agreements (FTAs) may seem superficially to be a viable alternative. This alternative has recently been tested in a trade dispute between the EU and Ukraine, which concerned WTO provisions incorporated by reference in a bilateral FTA between these parties. The article demonstrates empirically that this shift from multilateral to bilateral or regional forms of dispute settlement would likely have many negative consequences for economically disadvantaged WTO Members, whether they are a complainant or respondent, in a 'north-south', or 'south-south' trade dispute. While many of the practical challenges that these Members have typically faced in trade disputes, such as a relative lack of legal expertise, limited financial resources, and inadequate enforcement power, are less acute in the WTO multilateral legal framework, they remain a serious obstacle to trade justice under most FTAs.

About the presenter: Dr. Vitaliy Pogoretskyy

Works as Counsel at the Advisory Centre on WTO Law (ACWL), where he assists developing-country ACWL Members and the least-developed countries in WTO dispute settlement proceedings, and provides these countries with legal advice and training on WTO law. Prior to joining the ACWL, he also worked at the Rules Division of the WTO Secretariat, a Brussels-based law firm specializing in WTO law and EU law, and as a civil servant of the Government of Ukraine. He holds a PhD in law from the University of Dundee (UK), a Master’s in International Law and Economics from the World Trade Institute (Bern, Switzerland), LLM in International Commercial Arbitration Law from Stockholm University, and a postgraduate law degree from the National Law Academy of Ukraine (Kharkov, Ukraine). He has published extensively in English, Ukrainian, and Russian on various aspects of international law and WTO law.