Investment Facilitation for Development: what’s at stake at the 13th Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization?
Berger, Axel / Zoryana Olekseyuk (2024)
External Publications
The current debate on the Investment Facilitation for Development (IFD) Agreement could be very consequential for the World Trade Organization (WTO) although it is not part of the official calendar of next week’s 13th Ministerial Conference (MC13) in Abu Dhabi. A group of WTO Members have launched discussions on a plurilateral agreement on Investment Facilitation for Development at the 11th Ministerial Conference in 2017. These discussions have turned into actual negotiations from September 2020 onwards and in July 2023, around two thirds of the WTO’s Memberships concluded text-based negotiations. At MC13, Members aim at finalising the negotiations and integrating the plurilateral IFD Agreement into the WTO legal system. So what is at stake? Why is the IFD Agreement so controversial? And what do we know about its potential economic effects?