GATT members opened the Uruguay Round to update global trade rules beyond tariffs. The agenda expanded into new areas such as services and intellectual property, setting up negotiations that would later require a stronger institution than the GATT’s provisional structure.
By mid-December 1993, negotiators reached the core political bargains needed to finish the Uruguay Round package. This cleared the way for legal drafting and a final ministerial meeting where governments could formally sign the results as a single deal.
Trade ministers met in Marrakesh, Morocco, for the final ministerial session of the Trade Negotiations Committee. The meeting’s purpose was to adopt and sign the Uruguay Round’s “Final Act,” turning negotiated texts into a treaty package ready for ratification.
On 15 April 1994, governments signed the Marrakesh Agreement Establishing the World Trade Organization as part of the Uruguay Round’s Final Act. This created a new organization with a broader set of agreements and a more structured legal system than the GATT alone.
The Marrakesh Agreement tied many agreements together as one membership package (often called a “single undertaking”). In practice, this meant members accepted linked rules covering goods, services, and intellectual property, along with common procedures for disputes and trade-policy reviews.
The Uruguay Round updated the core goods-trade rules into “GATT 1994,” which incorporated the earlier GATT 1947 provisions (with adjustments and related legal instruments). This kept continuity with past rules while placing them inside the new WTO legal structure.
The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) set minimum standards for protecting and enforcing intellectual property across members. Bringing IP rules into the trade system was a major expansion of what multilateral trade agreements covered.
The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) created a shared rulebook for international trade in services such as finance, telecom, and transport. This was a key shift from the earlier GATT system, which focused mainly on trade in goods.
The Uruguay Round’s Agreement on Agriculture created rules and commitments to reform agricultural trade, including market access and limits on certain forms of support. It aimed to make farm trade more predictable, addressing a long-standing area of conflict in trade relations.
The Marrakesh Agreement specified that the WTO Agreement and its annexes would enter into force on 1 January 1995 for members that accepted the package. This turned the signed texts into an operating institution with binding commitments and common procedures.
On 1 January 1995, the WTO came into being as the successor to the GATT system and the main forum for rules-based global trade cooperation. The change mattered because the WTO combined a wider set of agreements with a permanent organization to administer them.
The WTO package included a strengthened dispute settlement system (the Dispute Settlement Understanding, or DSU). It was designed to make decisions harder to block and to create more reliable steps for resolving conflicts over WTO rights and obligations.
The Trade Policy Review Mechanism (TPRM) started as a WTO system for regularly reviewing members’ trade policies to improve transparency. These reviews were intended to support smoother day-to-day functioning by making policies easier to understand and compare.
By early 1995, the Uruguay Round moved from negotiation into implementation: one organization administered linked agreements on goods (GATT 1994), services (GATS), and intellectual property (TRIPS), supported by dispute settlement and policy reviews. This established the WTO-centered post-war trade order that continues to shape how countries negotiate, enforce, and adapt global trade rules.
Marrakesh Agreement and Establishment of the WTO (1994–1995)