Schedules of Specific Commitments, and How to Read One

In one line

Each member has a table with four columns saying, sector by sector and mode by mode, how far it is bound, and the table is the member's real obligation.

In exam wording: Article XX of the GATS requires each member to set out in a Schedule the specific commitments it undertakes, specifying the terms, limitations and conditions on market access, the conditions and qualifications on national treatment, undertakings relating to additional commitments, and where appropriate the time frame for implementation and the date of entry into force, and Article XX:3 makes the Schedules an integral part of the Agreement.

How the sectors are named

There is no list in the Agreement. Scheduling is done against the Services Sectoral Classification List, document MTN.GNS/W/120, prepared by the Secretariat during the Uruguay Round, which divides services into twelve sectors and about a hundred and sixty subsectors, cross-referenced to the United Nations Provisional Central Product Classification.

The twelve sectors are business services; communication; construction and related engineering; distribution; educational; environmental; financial; health related and social; tourism and travel related; recreational, cultural and sporting; transport; and other services not included elsewhere.

W/120 is not a legal instrument, and that is important. A member may schedule using it, may schedule a subsector of its own definition, or may schedule with its own description. What binds is what the member wrote, and W/120 is an aid to interpreting it.

United States: Measures Affecting the Cross-Border Supply of Gambling and Betting Services, WT/DS285/AB/R, adopted 20 April 2005, decides this. Facts. The United States had scheduled "Other recreational services (except sporting)" under recreational, cultural and sporting services, and argued that it had never intended to include gambling. Held. The entry is interpreted under the customary rules of treaty interpretation; W/120 and the corresponding Central Product Classification headings are part of the circumstances of conclusion and may be used; and on that basis the entry did include gambling. Antigua won. Why it matters: a Schedule means what its words mean, not what the scheduling member says it meant, and the classification documents are the tool for reading them.

The four columns

Each of the four modes is listed separately in the two limitation columns, so a Schedule entry for one sector is in effect eight cells.