The WTO and Regulatory Freedom: WTO Disciplines on Market Access, Non-Discrimination and Domestic Regulation Relating to Trade in Goods and Services

This article addresses the question as to how the principal World Trade Organization (WTO) obligations on market access relate to those on non-discrimination and domestic regulation. This issue has appropriately been referred to as 'the single most potent underlying source of legal and political tension in all free trade regimes'. 1 The present contribution focuses on the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), but by way of introduction it also briefly addresses pertinent WTO rules on trade in goods, so as to delineate a background against which the considerably more complicated legal situation in the GATS can be compared.