UK Joins WTO's Alternative to Defunct Appellate Body
The U.K. announced June 26 that it will join the Multi-Party Interim Appeal Arbitration Arrangement (MPIA), which is an arbitral alternative to the World Trade Organization's defunct Appellate Body, according to the Department for Business and Trade. The U.K. said the move demonstrates the nation's "commitment to an effective rules-based international trading system."
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The MPIA, which was initiated in April 2020 as a response to the U.S. blocking the nomination process to the Appellate Body, has created a forum for multiple WTO disputes to be settled, including, most recently, the EU's case against China over its enforcement of intellectual property rights (see 2504250008).
The announcement was made as part of the U.K.'s new trade strategy, which describes the MPIA as "a temporary arbitration arrangement for resolving appeals while the dispute settlement system remains only partially operational." The U.K. "remains dedicated to re-establishing a fully functioning WTO dispute settlement system and will continue collaborating with other WTO Members to achieve this objective."
The EU welcomed the U.K. announcement, noting that the MPIA now covers 57 WTO members. European Commissioner for Trade and Economic Security Maros Sefcovic said the MPIA "ensures the final and orderly resolution of trade disputes among its participants and supports rules-based trade." He added that "we increase the stability of multilateral trading relations" with each new member.
Simon Lester, head of WorldTradeLaw.net, said in a blog post that the U.K. makes it worth considering what other WTO members may join. Lester said the decision to join "may depend on internal and external political considerations, as well as more practical concerns about whether the Member is the respondent in current WTO disputes and may want to preserve the ability to appeal into the void, or is a complainant that would like to avoid appeals into the void."
With these factors in mind, Lester said the leading candidates to join are Argentina, Indonesia, Panama, South Africa and South Korea.