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International Trading System: Prospects for Emerging Markets Санкт-Петербург/ St. Petersburg 1 2 марта 2007 1 2 March 2007 программа

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Source: (WTO, 2006)
Ranking according to trade treaties signed
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2. Joining the WTO: Bulgarian commitments and trade liberalization measures. A WTO membership is influencing a country’s economic and social life in several key areas:


- trade of goods

Since 1995, the updated GATT has become the WTO’s umbrella agreement for trade in goods. It has annexes dealing with specific sectors such as agriculture and textiles, and with specific issues such as state trading, product standards, subsidies and actions taken against dumping.

- trade of services

Banks, insurance firms, telecommunications companies, tour operators, hotel chains and transport companies looking to do business abroad can now enjoy the same principles of freer and fairer trade that originally only applied to trade in goods.

- intellectual property

The WTO’s intellectual property agreement amounts to rules for trade and investment in ideas and creativity. The rules state how copyrights, patents, trademarks, geographical names used to identify products, industrial designs, integrated circuit layout-designs and undisclosed information such as trade secrets — “intellectual property” - should be protected when trade is involved.

- policy review

The Trade Policy Review Mechanism’s purpose is to improve transparency, to create a greater understanding of the policies that countries are adopting, and to assess their impact. Many members also consider the reviews as constructive feedback on their policies.

Source: (WTO, 2006)

The Commitments of Bulgaria. Bulgaria acceded to the WTO on 1 December 1996, and has accepted all multilateral and plurilateral agreements except the Agreement on Government Procurement, where it is an observer and where consultations on its membership are ongoing. It grants at least most-favored-nation treatment to all WTO Members. On accession, it bound all its tariffs under GATT 1994, and has since reduced its bound rates in accordance with its Schedule of Concession and Commitments; in some cases it has undertaken autonomous liberalization beyond that required under its Schedule.


For many applicant countries that are usually undergoing a systemic transformation of their economies a WTO membership is a fast way to benchmark and implement a fully developed and well-established set of norms. They ensure the effective opening of the economy, which some economists claim to be a crucial element of systemic transformation. The idea is that the need for transparency and for the effective implementation of written norms enforced by the scrutiny of current WTO members, promote the rule of law and the evolution of an independent judicial system (Langhammer & Lucke, 1999).

Bulgaria has sought to bring its trade-related legislation into conformity with WTO provisions, including legislative reforms on anti-dumping and countervailing actions, safeguard actions, and Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). During its WTO accession process, Bulgaria committed itself to bringing the rest of its domestic legislation into compliance with the TRIPS Agreement. It has undertaken extensive reforms to its national laws with this aim, and to harmonize them with EU legislation. As a result its intellectual property legislation is considered to be amongst the most modern in Central and Eastern Europe. In 1999 Bulgaria was removed from the US trade Department "Special 301 Watch List" that includes countries seriously violating intellectual property rights. The government also introduced new bankruptcy and competition laws. It has taken up further obligations on basic telecommunications and financial services.

The commitments taken by the new members joining WTO vary a lot depending on the situation of the country, including such factors as the extent to which its economy is developed and market oriented. By the WTO accession mechanism commitments on export subsidies and domestic support are based on the members’ use of such support in recent years prior to the accession, and tariff commitments are based on recent applied rates. Interestingly enough the Bulgarian authorities used 1986-88 data for commitments on domestic support and 1986-90 on export subsidies. The main assumption supporting such a choice was that in 1989 - 1996 the Bulgarian economy was in a deep depression so these years could have not served as a proper benchmark. As a result Bulgaria stands out as having the largest Total Aggregate Measurement of Support /AMS / commitment among eighteen New Members (Brink, 2003). This results from Bulgaria’s 1986-88 base period for total AMS, when farm support was high. If the base period had been in the early 1990s, a much lower total AMS commitment could have been applied.

The negative effect of such strategy was that Bulgaria joined WTO with a status of developed country even if it current economic and social situation would have undoubtedly characterize the country as a developing one. Here one must consider the political significance of joining an internationally recognized organization such as the WTO and receiving the status of a developed country. Against the moral bankruptcy and managerial incompetence of several consecutive governments the WTO membership was perceived as a considerable achievement aiming to boost the self-confidence of the Bulgarian people in general and the political elite in particular.

Despite economic insufficiency and the negative social impact of liberalization, the Bulgarian government pursued the WTO agenda as the government considered it as a part of the country’s effort to be accepted into the international community. As might be seen in Table 1 in terms of ratified trade treaties of 205 major multilateral agreements covering contracts, customs, dispute resolution, environment and products, finance, illicit trade, intellectual property, investment, transport, treaty law and WTO agreements as of 1 January 2005 Bulgaria is quite up in the ranking.

Table 1

Ranking according to trade treaties signed



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