RESTRICTED  
  
S/CSC/W/69  
 
5 March 2020  
(20-1777) Page: 1/2 
Committee on Specific Commitments  Original: English  
 
 PROPOSAL FROM THE UN ITED STATES  
UPDATING GATS SCHEDU LES WITH CONDITIONAL  SPECIFIC COMMITMENT S 
 
The following communication, date d 5 March 2020 , is being circulated to Members of the Committee 
on Specific Commitments, at the request of the delegation of the United States.  
_______________  
 
1.1.  At the 28 October 2019 meeting of the Committee on Specific Commitments (CSC), the Chair 
raised the possibility of future work of the CSC. As described in the annotated agenda for the 
28 October 2019 meetin g (JOB/SERV/295), this work could "examine commitments which condition 
their entry into force, implementation or improvement to the adoption of new legislation or the 
review of the pre -existing regime, with a view to bringing them up to date. " Most of thes e 
commitments date back to the 1990s. It would be useful to examine these schedules to see where 
Members might provide updated schedules.   
1.2.  One example of the type of conditional specific commitment raised by Members is a 
telecommunications entry by one Me mber in its Schedule of Specific Commitments. In its Schedule, 
the Member conditioned its commitments in the following manner:  
Under mode 3 Market Access:  
 
Conditional upon passage and coming into force of all necessary new communication acts, 
commencing f rom the year 2006, this Member will introduce the market access elements  as 
contained in those acts into relevant parts of its Schedule of Specific Commitments relating to 
the supply of public telecommunication services. (emphasis added).  
 
Under mode 3 National Treatment:  
 
Conditional upon passage and coming into force of all necessary new communication acts, 
commencing from the year 2006, this Member will introduce the national treatment elements  
as contained in those acts into relevant parts of its Schedule of Specific Commitments relating 
to the supply of public telecommunic ation services. (emphasis added).  
 
Under Additional Commitments:  
 
Conditional upon passage and coming into force of all necessary new communication acts, 
commencing from the year 2006, this Member will introduce into its Schedule of Specific 
Commitments  on public telecommunications services its treatment on the subjects relating to 
competitive safeguards, interconnection, universal service, public availability of licensing 
criteria, separation of regulatory and operational functions, and the allocation and use of 
scarce resources. (emphasis added) . 
 
1.3.  To date, the Member ha s not yet revised its Schedule as it indicated it would after 2006 even 
though relevant communication laws have come into force. In order to have an accurate and more 
complete schedule of commitments, Members that indicated they would submit revisions shou ld do 
so.  As one Member stated at the last CSC meeting, it is unlikely that Members would oppose this S/CSC/W/69  
 
- 2 - 
 
  work as it would improve transparency of commitments.1 Another Member reminded the Committee 
that one of its functions is to examine, at the request of M embers, schedules of specific commitments 
with a view to improving their technical accuracy and coherence in the future.2   
Proposed Next Steps:  
 
1.4.  The United States requests the WTO Secretariat identify Members' GATS schedules that contain 
specific commitme nts that were conditioned on implementing or improving their services regime, 
for example following the adoption of new measures, a policy review, or domestic reforms.  Members 
with such conditional commitments would be requested to provide an update on th e outcome and 
current status of the measure, review, or reform in question and their plans to revise their schedules 
in accordance with their existing Schedule of Specific Commitments.  
 
__________  
 
 
 
1 See Report of the Meeting Held on 28 October 2019, S/CSC/M/81.  
2  Ibid.