RESTRICTED  WORLD TRADE  
ORGANIZATION  TN/S/W/21 
8 September 2004 
 (04-3760) 
Council for Trade in Services  
Special Session Original:   English 
 
 
 
COMMUNICATION FROM SWITZERLAND 
 
On the importance of improving the scheduling of GATS commitments  
 
 
The following communication, dated 31 August 2004, from the delegation of Switzerland is 
being circulated to the Members of the Council for Trade in Services. 
 
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I. BACKGROUND AND RATIONALE  
1. The schedules of all Members together are ve ry extensive.  They contain about 7000 
commitments and cover varied sectors and types of measures.  This paper addresses the issue of transparency of GATS schedules, i.e. the importance of drafting schedules in a clear, unequivocal and 
explicit way, taking account of existing GATS material developed for that purpose.  In a statement in 
the Council for Trade in Services, the delegation of Hong Kong, China had referred to the 3 c's: 
clarity, certainty, comparability. 
2. Members will benefit from clearer schedules in many respects.  The prime benefit is to allow 
Members to know better the obligations of their trade partners and their own obligations.  An 
enhanced readability of offers w ill make the negotiating processes mo re efficient.  Transparency 
thereby eases the progressive liberalization of services trade.  In particular, it will ease comparability 
between offers and facilitate Request/Offer negotia tions.  Especially Members having restrained 
negotiating resources would profit by this. Better transparency and less ambiguity will ease legal 
interpretation of schedules, and as a consequence reduce the occurrence and complexity of legal 
disputes and make dispute settlement easier. 
3. National consultation processes show that alr eady now schedules are perceived by Members' 
industry as extraordinarily complex and not always easy to understand.  Ultimate beneficiaries of GATS commitments are Members' individual service pr oviders, natural or legal persons. In order to 
ensure that they are aware of the rights derived from GATS it is essential that the schedules are easy 
to read, to interpret and to compare . At present,  schedules do not perform very well on this score.  
Readability of commitments is most important fo r small and medium-sized enterprises, as these may 
not have legal staff. Similarly, readability of comm itments is crucial for developing countries’ service 
providers.  They also often lack legal resources and therefore rely on comp rehensible and legally 
certain schedules. Commitments should be drafted clearly enough to allow laypersons to understand 
their meaning. 
4. A major added value of GATS commitments is legal certainty and transparency for the 
operators, bearing in mind that in some cases commitm ents happen in fact to merely bind an already 
existing level of liberalization.  The advantages of  legal certainty and transparency are not to be TN/S/W/21 
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 underestimated as of a cosmetic nature only.  St udies show that long term economic growth is 
promoted by a stable institutional environment such as the rule of law and, as part of it, legal certainty 
and transparency.  Hence, similar to the benefits of liberal trade regimes, legal certainty and transparency matter in promoting investments a nd in improving conditions for long term economic 
growth world-wide. 
5. Benefits of clearly drafted schedules are thus  overwhelming.  This explains why Members 
have put a lot of resources into de veloping adequate transparency st andards, in particular in the 
Scheduling Guidelines
1.  These Guidelines have a central role to play in the GATS. Members must be 
more aware of them and actually use them. The Gu idelines partly draw on and reaffirm the wording 
of GATS Article XX, which is the key GATS provision regarding scheduling.  The importance of this 
provision must be underscored.  Further to that , over a decade of GATS practice Members have 
developed some commonly used terms and concepts th at are very helpful to ease drafting, reading and 
interpretation of schedules. 
6. Proper scheduling must make sure that the potential of increased legal certainty and 
transparency is effectively achieved during the present Round. Having a deadline for improved offers, 
it is now time to agree on recognizing the bene fits and objectives of further improvement of the 
scheduling of commitments.  The recommendati ons adopted by the General Council on 1 August 
2004 reaffirms that Members shall strive to ensure a high quality of offers.2  Though that pertains 
primarily to the substantial quality of offers, their formal quality is also of crucial importance.   
II. IMPROVING TRANSPARENCY OF SCHEDULES 
7. In order to improve transparency of schedules,  Members are urged to observe the following 
general recommendations:   
(a) Make the schedules unequivocal, avoid anything that could be ambiguous. 
(b) Apply the Scheduling Guidelines as well as GATS Art. XX. Recognize their central 
role in the present Request/Offer negotiations. 
(c) Make the schedules comparable by using customary or commonly agreed terms, 
phrases, headings and classifications. 
(d) Make the schedules self-explaining by describing measures adequately. 
(e) Follow technical discussions in the Committee of Specific Commitments on 
scheduling issues and take note of its c onclusions especially in the Request/Offer 
process. 
(f) Make schedules user friendly, clear enough for non-GATS-experts to understand 
them. The advantage, also in terms of  user-friendliness, of having clean (full) 
commitments shall be recognized. 
 
8. The lists below illustrate means to improve tr ansparency of schedules when describing sectors 
and sub-sectors and when recording commitments.  Th ey rely heavily on the Scheduling Guidelines.  
These illustrative lists are not exhaustive and are not intended to be a technical analysis of all 
                                                      
1 Guidelines for the Scheduling of  Specific Commitments under the General Agreement on Trade in 
Services (GATS), Adopted by the Council for Trade in Services on 23 March 2001, Document S/L/92. 
2 Annex C to the General Council Decision of 1 August 2004, WT/L/579 of 2 August 2004.  TN/S/W/21 
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 transparency problems possibly arising in schedules. In fact, possible impediments to transparency of 
schedules are virtually innumerable.  Thus transpar ency should be borne in mind as a general aim as 
well. 
A. ON HOW TO DESCRIBE COMMITTED SECTORS AND SUB -SECTORS  
(a) Follow the W/120-classification.  An alternative classification should be used only on 
the basis of a broad acceptance among Members. 
(b) In particular, use the exact sector headings of W/120-classification. In this vein, make 
systematic reference to CPC. If the scope (i.e. heading in the 1st column) of a 
committed sector or sub-sector shall deliberately deviate from W/120, make such deviation visible by spelling it out clearly (e .g. if a sector is committed only partly). 
(c) Commitments in the financial sector shall be scheduled according to the classification 
of the GATS Annex on Financial Services. 
B. O
N HOW TO RECORD COMMITMENTS  
(a) Commitments must be spelled out clearly.  Therefore, commitments must not be 
made by a mere reference to a given nationa l legal provision, or to “relevant national 
laws”.  Instead, commitments must be entere d consistent with Art. XX:1 (a) and (b), 
i.e. by spelling out any “terms, limitations and conditions” on market access and any “conditions and qualifications” on national treatment. 
(b) Consistent with GATS Art. XX, commitments in the MA and NT columns shall only 
relate to actual Article XVI and XVII measures. 
(c) Limitations on Market Access or National Treatment shall not be inscribed in the 
column for additional commitments.  This  column is reserved for additional 
commitments other than MA or NT. 
(d) Commitments must be specific.  Any ENTs or LMTs maintained in schedules must 
specify the criteria applied.  Such criteri a must be transparent, predictable and 
objective. The same holds whenever a co mmitment makes market access subject to 
an authorization or a license or any other form of approval. 
(e) Measures inscribed in schedules are specific limitations to full Market Access or 
National Treatment.  To enhance the user-friendliness of schedules, it should be clarified by inscribing “None, except the measure” instead of “The measure” only. 
(f) In sectors where the borderline between service provision under Modes 1 and 2 is 
hazy, that blur can be overcome by undertaking the same commitment for both 
modes. 
(g) In modes 1 and 2, use the sentence "Unbound due to lack of technical feasibility" 
only in the exceptional cases where none of the activities described in CPC can 
possibly be provided under these modes. 
III. NEGOTIATING PROPOSALS 
9. Transparency of schedules has a value in itsel f that benefits all Members and their service 
providers. Hence the goal of transparent schedules shall be pursued by all Members.  In the TN/S/W/21 
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 preparation of their revised offe rs, which should be tabled by Ma y 2005, Members shall strive to 
ensure not only a high quality in the substance, but also a drafting of high formal and technical quality. 
10. Members shall strive to follow the list of ge neral recommendations above.  In particular, 
Members shall take due account of the Schedu ling Guidelines S/L/92 and of GATS Art. XX.  
Members may use the lists above as a tool for bila teral requests and offers  negotiations, e.g. for 
pointing out possible improvements of sche dules within the bilateral negotiations. 
11. Members may suggest amendments to the lists  above and discuss further means to foster 
transparency of schedules in appropriate bodies a nd informal groupings, in accordance with their 
existing working methods, mandates or procedures. 
 
 
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