Milestones in the WTO development

The main goal of this thesis is to describe crucial moments in the development of the WTO organization by focusing on key ministerial conferences and negotiations among influential members of this organization. The main goal is therefore to evaluate results and impacts of these ministerial conferences, to describe newly applied rules of international trade in selected trade areas and changes in the negotiation power among members of newly formed informal groups within the organization structures. The thesis is divided into four chapters, each of which describes a milestone which had a significant importance in the development of the WTO organization. The first chapter, called "The Uruguay round", is mainly focusing on the key initiators and players of the whole round of negotiations, on the results and impacts on further WTO development. The second chapter, called "The third ministerial conference in Seattle", is looking for the causes of the negotiations' failure and first strong disagreements among members which were notable since then. The third chapter , called "The fourth ministerial conference in Doha", is describing the process of the Doha negotiations by focusing on the crucial players, informal groups and on issues of the highest importance to most of the WTO members, i.e. trade in agricultural and nonagricultural products. The fourth chapter, called "The July package 2008", is analyzing the content of the proposed package. Even though the WTO members were able to reach conformity in some trade areas several crucial issues have remained unsolved which led to a collapse of the July negotiations and to a non-closure of the whole Doha round.