Research On Fisheries Subsidies Under The WTO System

In recent years,the serious depletion of the world's marine fisheries resources has drawn growing public attention.In many cases the widespread and severe overcapacity of the fishing industry is directly supported by huge government payments made to fishing interests.On November 14,2001,the Fourth Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization held in Doha decided to include fishing subsidies on the list of issues to be addressed in the new round multilateral trade talks. Afterwards,members containing substantial interests contingent upon fisheries turned in textual proposals to make clear their opinions and gave suggestions on specific issues.After the elaboration and comments upon the textual proposals from the WTO members,this dissertation further tries to explore the practicable rules on fisheries subsidies on the production level.Except for the introduction and conclusion,this dissertation consists of four chapters.After the introduction of the forms of fisheries subsidies,this dissertation introduces the definition and classification of fisheries subsidies by certain international organizations and the process of the development of the issues of fisheries subsidies within the WTO regime in the first chapter.In order to demonstrate that it is necessary to introduce new rules to solve the specific issues on fisheries subsidies,the second chapter introduces the current rules governing fisheries subsidies in the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures and analyzes the deficiencies of these rules in addressing the problems caused by fisheries subsidies.The third chapter is the most important part of this dissertation.This chapter elaborates on the WTO members' textual proposals on the rules of fisheries subsidies and comments briefly on them.In the current negotiations on fisheries subsidies,the WTO members gave suggestions on the important issues which include the approach for the future rules,the classification of fisheries subsidies,the special and differential treatment and the fisheries management systems.In the last chapter,the author gives us his opinion on fisheries subsidies on the production level within the WTO regime.