Naujų narių priėmimas į pasaulio prekybos organizaciją: Lietuvos, Kinijos ir Rusijos atvejai
LTPasaulio prekybos organizacija (PPO) yra viena didžiausių ir svarbiausių tarptautinę prekybą prižiūrinčių organizacijų. Prisijungimas prie šios organizacijos yra pagrindinė priemonė valstybėms integruotis į tarptautinę prekybos sistemą. Atsižvelgiant į prisijungimo prie PPO specifiką (stojant reikia derėtis su visomis organizacijos narėmis), daroma prielaida, kad naujų narių priėmimas yra puiki terpė PPO narėms siekti ne tik ekonominių, bet ir politinių interesų. Siekiant patvirtinti šį teiginį, nagrinėjamos trijų valstybių - Lietuvos, Kinijos ir Rusijos - priėmimo į PPO derybos. Straipsnyje norima išsiaiškinti, ar buvo ir, jeigu taip, kokie politiniai PPO narių tikslai, kaip jie įtakojo stojimo derybas, pagaliau, kokie motyvai, politiniai ar ekonominiai, nusvėrė priimant į organizaciją naujas nares.
ENThe World Trade Organization is the only international body dealing with the rules of trade among nations. Participation in the WTO is nowadays an essential condition for every trading state. Accession to the WTO is a challenging process for an acceding country, because adjusting laws and institutions to the WTO provisions is not enough for membership. The accession process also involves specific bilateral negotiations between an applicant and any WTO Member wishing to hold them. This creates a perfect environment for the WTO Members to seek economic, as well as political interests. This paper examines the WTO accession negotiations, with focus on different countries such as Lithuania, China and Russia. The objective is to ascertain political motives of the WTO members in respect of acceding countries, and define the impact they had on accession negotiations; finally, what interests prevailed: political or economic. The paper concludes that formal accession procedures did not play an important role in negotiations with all examined countries. The WTO negotiations process and results highly depended on the political motives of the WTO Members. The crucial factor modifying Lithuania's accession process was the forthcoming membership in the EU. The European countries were politically motivated to support Lithuania's accession to the WTO.Quite an opposite position was held by non-EU countries. Rather than liberalizing Lithuanian trade regime the hard-line requirements were posed on gaining political leverage with the EU to open its market too. The relations between China and the democratic countries were always highly politicized because of existing ideological differences. This is the main factor, why political motivations of the WTO Members often prevailed over economic interests and often modified accession process and requirements. It seems that political interests are not playing any role in Russia's case. But there is one issue that is unique to Russia's entry and possibly indicating presence of political interests. The EU is demanding Russia to liberalize its energy politics. This accession requirement is quite unusual: energy is not yet part of the areas of trade covered by the WTO and it has never been an issue in any country's accession negotiations. Because the positions of the both sides are so fundamentally opposed, Russia's accession to the organization is likely to be delayed.
