With the accession of Afghanistan in 2016, the World Trade Organization (WTO) numbered 164 members with nineteen other states in line to join. The WTO is certainly not alone in its growth though; the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and the European Union (EU) are all expanding with dozens of states continuing to negotiate their potential membership. What impact does membership in international organizations really have? Why do some states have a seemingly easy path to joining international organizations while others find the process nearly impossible? What implications do these difficult accession processes have on the domestic and international politics of the acceding states? The author presents the two-level theory of accession, which highlights factors at the domestic level and international organization level, to explain how accession processes in the WTO and EU vary from state to state and the impact of these variations. In so doing, this book provides a unique perspective on the topic of membership in international organizations.

European Commissions negotiating strategy for the WTO Hong Kong Ministerial : Oral and written Evidence

The EU negotiations differ from traditional international negotiations in several respects and this book presents a detailed analysis of the processes while examining its distinguishing features.

On 1 July 2000 regulations to liberalize trade flows between Mexico and the European Union came into force, after more than six years of diplomatic work and complex negotiations. These regulations are part of the "Tratado de Libre Comercio (TLCUEM), which is also one of the components of the Agreement on Economic Association, Political Concertation and Cooperation ("Global Agreement"). The Global Agreement through its three components - political dialogue, trade liberalization and cooperation- was at the time the most ambitious agreement ever constituted by the EU. The economic association component included in the Global Agreement - the TLCUEM- was the first overseas free trade treaty and served as an important precedent for later EU negotiations with other Latin American countries. The purpose of this essay is to analyze the reasons that led Mexico and the EU to the constitution of this treaty; to describe the main challenges of the Global Agreement negotiations of different components; and to briefly review the results of the first three years since the TLCUEM enforcement.