[1] The European Community, in accordance with its competencies, has ratified the agreements reached during the Uruguay Round of multilateral negotiations (1986–1994) and authorized the legal signing of the treaty establishing the World Trade Organization.
This enabled GATS, included in Annex 1B of the Marrakesh Agreement, to come into effect across the European Community member states.
Legal obstacles to services trade can have legitimate policy reasons, but they can also be an effective tool for large scale corruption.
There are twelve service sectors (Business; Communication; Construction and Engineering; Distribution; Education; Environment; Financial; Health; Tourism and Travel; Recreation, Cultural, and Sporting; Transport; and "Other") divided into sub-sectors.
WTO member-government spokespersons are obliged to dismiss such criticism because of prior commitment to perceived benefits of prevailing commercial principles of competition and 'liberalisation'.
Important public utilities such as water and electricity most commonly involve purchase by consumers and are thus demonstrably "provided on a commercial basis".
Over a fairly short time perspective, this could open up for the privatisation or marketisation of large parts, and possibly all, of what today are considered public services currently available for the whole population of a country as a social entitlement, to be restructured, marketised, contracted out to for-profit providers, and eventually fully privatised and available only to those who can pay for them.