Appendix A - Domestic support provisions of the Agreement on Agriculture

Summary

Editors' note: Appendix A provides the key provisions of the Agreement on Agriculture relevant to the domestic support disciplines. The full text of the Agreement and others are published in The Results of the Uruguay Round of Multilateral Trade Negotiations – The Legal Texts (WTO 1995) and are available on the WTO website. We exercise some judgment for brevity of the appendix. The preamble and other generally relevant articles are included for context while only the titles are given for articles related to market access and export competition, and a few others only indirectly related to domestic support.

Members

Having decided to establish a basis for initiating a process of reform of trade in agriculture in line with the objectives of the negotiations as set out in the Punta del Este Declaration;

Recalling that their long-term objective as agreed at the Mid-Term Review of the Uruguay Round “is to establish a fair and market-oriented agricultural trading system and that a reform process should be initiated through the negotiation of commitments on support and protection and through the establishment of strengthened and more operationally effective GATT rules and disciplines”;

Recalling further that “the above-mentioned long-term objective is to provide for substantial progressive reductions in agricultural support and protection sustained over an agreed period of time, resulting in correcting and preventing restrictions and distortions in world agricultural markets”;

Committed to achieving specific binding commitments in each of the following areas: market access; domestic support; export competition; and to reaching an agreement on sanitary and phytosanitary issues;