Educational liberalization under the AGCS/GATS: Analyzing the current state of negotiations

Abstract

The aim of this article is to analyze the factors that influence the commercial liberalization of educational services in the General Agreement of Trade in Services (GATS) framework. First at all, we examine closely the negotiation methodology of the Agreement, as well as we check the commitments of the WTO members in the educational sector. On the other hand we analyze the provisional results of the last round of services (GATS2000) which is still being negotiated. The primary data sources are interviews to different delegations of the countries members of the WTO, documents of position of some delegations and documents of analysis of the “Council of Trade in Services” of the WTO.