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Financial services

Financial services is an area where further negotiations were scheduled to improve on the commitments included in the initial Uruguay Round schedules. Officially the first set of talks ended in July 1995, but the governments decided that more could be achieved if further talks could be held. These latest negotiations ended in December 1997.

 

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Basic telecommunication services 

During the Uruguay Round, many governments made commitments in value-added telecommunication services. However very few offered commitments on basic telecommunications. This is why member governments agreed to continue negotiations on basic telecommunications. Talks therefore resumed in 1994 and ended in February 1997 with new commitments.

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Movement of natural persons 

During the Uruguay Round, governments made commitments in the Movement of Natural Persons. However, it was agreed that negotiations to improve commitments would take place in the six months after the WTO came into force. The negotiations ended on 28 July 1995 and only achieved modest results.

 

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Maritime services 

Maritime services is an area where further negotiations were scheduled to improve on the commitments included in the initial Uruguay Round schedules. Negotiations were originally scheduled to end in June 1996, but participants failed to agree on a package of commitments. The talks have resumed with the new services round which started in 2000.

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GATS protocols

Attached to GATS are additional agreements called “protocols”, which deal with the results of subsequent negotiations.
There is no “First Protocol”. The name was reserved for some least developed countries’ commitments, which were to take effect a few months after 1 January 1995, when the results of the 1986–94 Uruguay Round negotiations came into force. In the end, these delayed commitments were incorporated into the Uruguay Round agreement, and so there was no need for a separate protocol.

• Second protocol: financial services (adopted 21 July 1995, entered into force 1 September 1996)
  > browse text   > MS Word (1 page, 14KB)   > pdf (1 page, 7KB)
   
• Third protocol: movement of natural persons (adopted 21 July 1995, entered into force 30 January 1996)
  > browse text   > MS Word (1 page, 31KB)   > pdf (1 page, 10KB)
    
• Fourth protocol: basic telecommunications (adopted 30 April 1997, entered into force 5 February 1998)
  > browse text   > MS Word (1 page, 33KB)   > pdf (1 page, 9KB)
    
• Fifth protocol: financial services (adopted 14 November 1997, entered into force 1 March 1999
  > browse text   > MS Word (1 page, 15KB)   > pdf (1 page, 7KB)