The Services Council has seen some changes in its subsidiary bodies. The completion of the basic telecommunications negotiations in February 1997 meant the end of the negotiating group, at least until the new services negotiating round, which started in 2000. In theory, the negotiating group on maritime services still exists, but with the talks suspended until 2000, the group is unlikely to be active. Other subsidiaries deal with professional services, GATS rules and specific commitment. It could be said that important breakthroughs are rarely made in any of these formal bodies, least of all in the higher level councils.
More difficult issues have to be thrashed out in smaller groups.
For much of the Uruguay Round, a system of so-called Green Room meetings was established, involving perhaps as many as 40 countries most interested in the particular issue under discussion. Occasionally a deadlock can only be broken in a small group of two, three or four countries, sometimes at meetings they have organized themselves in their own countries. In a market access negotiation, where the final outcome is a multilateral package of individual countries' commitments, those commitments are the result of numerous bilateral, informal bargaining sessions. To this day, informal consultations in various forms play a vital role in allowing consensus to be reached, but they never appear in organization charts. They are not separate from the formal meetings, however.