This article is part of a Synergies series on Next generation trade arrangements for environment and sustainable development. Any views and opinions expressed are those of the author(s).

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When schedules were first used, they recorded ceiling bindings on import tariffs, providing transparency and predictability. They also allowed for a degree of variable geometry, which is why scheduling is even more relevant today. Governments increasingly need to regulate quickly in complex new areas, and negotiations may be facilitated where commitments are subdivided and differentiated and correspond better to national realities. 

Schedules should not be viewed merely as repositories of negotiated concessions. Instead, they function as instruments through which World Trade Organization (WTO) members can calibrate commitments, incorporate differentiated obligations, and adapt, if negotiated appropriately, to suit specific sectors, products, modes of supply, or implementation capacities. Their organization can encourage or accommodate different regulatory capacities and incorporate conditions, qualifications, or implementation periods that make commitments more acceptable to members, particularly those concerned about rigid or immediately enforceable obligations.

Schedules are nevertheless binding and have been considered as “treaty text”; they are not ancillary instruments but integral components of WTO law, subject to interpretation under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. At the same time, schedules cannot be used to contradict the provisions to which they relate (United States – Restrictions on Imports of Sugar). Their function is to add to, qualify, complete, or specify commitments, not to diminish an obligation. (United States – Restrictions on Imports of Sugar, and EC – Bananas III and EC – Export Subsidies on Sugar).

Korea – Various Measures on Beef illustrates the operational significance of schedules. The Panel held that Note 6(e) to Korea’s schedule did not contradict GATT prohibition of quota (Article XI) obligations, but qualified Korea’s obligations by allowing certain remaining restrictions to benefit from a transition period until 1 January 2001.

There are different schedules in the WTO system today. Part I of this note reviews them chronologically, exploring their practices and potential. Part II discusses how some of those insights can be used to facilitate negotiation of new types of commitments.

A. Historical Evolution of Scheduling 

Schedules have been used in international trade for almost 80 years. While they first recorded maximum, or bound, tariff commitments, subject to the “terms, conditions or qualifications” set out in each member’s schedule under Article II of the GATT, they have developed over time to include non-tariff provisions in other trade areas, such as government procurement, agriculture, services, and trade facilitation.

Government Procurement Agreement

The Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) provides a paradigmatic illustration of schedules as operational instruments. While the GPA establishes general principles and procedural rules for government procurement, the scope of each party’s obligations is defined through its coverage schedule. These schedules determine the procuring entities covered, applicable thresholds, goods, services, and construction services covered, and permissible exclusions or general notes, resulting from extensive negotiation between GPA parties.

The 1979 Tokyo Round GPA already used a system functionally like schedules, although the terminology and structure differed from the WTO GPA that exists today. The Tokyo Round GPA contained appendices or lists identifying each party’s coverage commitments, including covered entities, thresholds, products, exclusions, and derogations, though they were not formally called schedules. The (amended) GPA 2012 continued and refined this approach through schedules, which accommodates diverse administrative structures and policy sensitivities through coverage commitments that each party negotiates and records in its own schedule. 

Agreement on Agriculture

The Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) represents a decisive shift in the function of schedules. The innovation was not the existence of schedules themselves, which were already embedded in the GATT (tariff) system, but the decision to place non-tariff agricultural commitments into WTO members’ schedules. Unlike other schedules, agricultural commitments were not placed in an autonomous scheduling instrument. They were integrated into the existing goods schedules of GATT 1994, principally through a newly created Part IV, which the AoA established specifically to record domestic support and export subsidy commitments.

Agricultural schedules therefore incorporated tariff and tariff-rate quota bindings, as well as Aggregate Measurement of Support (domestic support) commitments and export subsidy reduction commitments. This changed the internal structure of schedules: agricultural products were distinguished from non-agricultural products, and ordinary bound tariffs were recorded separately from tariff-rate quotas within Part I, while domestic support and export subsidy commitments were placed in the newly created Part IV. 

The AoA explicitly anchors substantive obligations within individual members’ schedules. Article 3.1 of the AoA provides that domestic support and export subsidy commitments contained in Part IV of each member’s schedule “constitute commitments limiting subsidization” and are made an integral part of GATT 1994. Article 3.2 prohibits members from providing domestic support in excess of the commitment levels specified in their schedules, while Article 8 requires export subsidies to conform to the agreement and to the specific commitments set out in members’ schedules. 

General Agreement on Trade in Services 

The GATS transformed market access and national treatment into specific commitments. Articles XVI and XVII apply in sectors and modes of supply where a member has undertaken commitments, and subject to the terms, limitations, and conditions inscribed in its schedule. Article XVI identifies six types of market access restrictions that cannot be maintained in scheduled sectors unless they are inscribed in the member’s schedule, while Article XVII expressly allows national treatment commitments to be made subject to “any conditions and qualifications.” Market access and national treatment therefore need not operate as absolute obligations; they may be calibrated through scheduled commitments. This mechanism can be used in other sectors.

Article XVIII further expands this scheduling technique by allowing members to undertake additional commitments on matters not covered by Articles XVI and XVII, including qualifications, standards, or licensing matters. It therefore encourages schedules to become vehicles for regulatory commitments beyond market access and national treatment. The GATS thus shows how commitments, which may be narrower in scope, can provide the necessary flexibility to implement differentiation and progressive liberalization through negotiated schedules. 

Trade Facilitation Agreement 

For the implementation of the Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA), developing and least developed members classified the provisions of the agreement into three categories. Category A covers provisions implemented upon entry into force, Category B covers provisions implemented after a transitional period, and Category C covers provisions implemented after a transitional period and upon the acquisition of implementation capacity through assistance and support for capacity building. The TFA therefore links implementation to capacity, transition periods, and technical assistance. Although these instruments are called “annexes” rather than schedules, they perform a schedule-like function by adapting common obligations to the different needs and capacities of members and they are stated to be binding. The Investment Facilitation for Development Agreement (IFDA) (not yet in force) uses a similar category structure. 

B. Modification of Schedules

One important factor when discussing schedules is that their modification was facilitated in 1980, at least for tariff commitments. Schedules can be modified unilaterally under certain conditions. Article XXVIII already permitted a member to modify or withdraw concessions through negotiations with members holding relevant negotiating rights or supplying interests. Modifications include increased tariffs and withdrawal of certain concessions. However, renegotiation of non-tariff provisions via Article XXVIII has always faced opposition from some WTO members, particularly in the context of compensation for changes to agriculture, sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS), or conditions included in schedules in the context of European Union enlargements. Both Article XXVIII and the 1980 Procedures are, by their own terms, confined to tariff concessions in Part I of schedules. Neither instrument extends to the non-tariff commitments.

In 1980, GATT members developed procedures for facilitating “adjustments” to scheduled commitments, without having to reopen the treaty text via complex GATT amendment procedures. The Procedures for the Modification and Rectification of Schedules provide a certification mechanism primarily designed for situations where existing benefits are not altered or nullified. The proposed change is circulated to members and, if no objection is raised within three months, it may be certified. Even before certification, WTO jurisprudence has indicated that changes to schedules on goods can be implemented between negotiating parties (China — (EU) Poultry Products). This procedure has allowed members to incorporate tariff eliminations for information technology products and pharmaceutical products.

Two modification pathways run through these agreements: collective adjustment, where members with a shared commitment revise their schedules together, and individual modification, where a single member changes its own schedule and must secure agreement from, or compensate, affected members.

The implementation of the 2015 Nairobi Ministerial Decision on Export Competition further illustrates this collective pathway in practice. To operationalize the commitment to eliminate agricultural export subsidies, members with export subsidy reduction commitments had to modify their schedules. This was possible because agricultural export subsidy commitments were recorded in schedules in value and volume terms.

The GATS also provides for modification of individual members’ schedules. If members cannot agree on compensation, and certification cannot proceed, there can be arbitration, with the burden on the affected member to prove harm. Compensation here is not monetary but takes the form of a replacement commitment of equivalent value negotiated on a most-favoured-nation basis, like compensatory tariff renegotiation under the GATT. This mechanism was first tested in 2024, when India challenged Australia’s addition of Services Domestic Regulation commitments to its schedule; the Arbitration Body found no reduction in India's benefits, and Australia’s modification was certified in February 2025.

The GPA offers a comparable mechanism. Under Article XIX of the GPA 2012, a party may unilaterally modify its coverage schedule by notifying the Committee; an objecting party may invoke arbitration or withdraw equivalent coverage, calibrated to committee-adopted compensation criteria rather than a fixed formula. Such modifications are routine in practice: the European Union, for instance, has standing authorization to notify changes on an ongoing basis. Together with GATS, the GPA is one of the few WTO instruments that operationalizes unilateral modification of non-tariff commitments through arbitration and compensation.

The AoA has no equivalent mechanism. A member seeking to increase its Part IV domestic support or export subsidy commitments has no arbitration or compensation formula to rely on. Absent a collectively negotiated adjustment, it needs the agreement of affected members, since nothing short of that consensus or formal amendment is available.

The TFA follows a different logic. Because Category A, B, and C designations are self-declared national commitments rather than negotiated concessions, changing them does not require formally amending the agreement itself, unlike the AoA, where no such provision exists. Instead, the TFA allows only downward flexibility: category shifts under Article 19 and extension requests under the Article 17 Early Warning Mechanism, both used in practice via the TFA Facility’s public notification registry. It contains no comparable provision for reintroducing restrictions. 

Some members have also been able to modify their GATS schedules in a coordinated manner. Earlier examples include the Reference Paper on Basic Telecommunications and the Understanding on Commitments in Financial Services, which illustrate how members can undertake additional or specific commitments in particular service sectors. The Services Domestic Regulation disciplines take this technique further: unlike the earlier sector-specific examples, they operate horizontally across scheduled services sectors where members have undertaken relevant commitments and were incorporated into individual GATS schedules rather than through a formal amendment of the GATS text itself. 

The integration of these regulatory disciplines illustrates how schedules can serve as vehicles for incremental legal development, allowing commitments to be undertaken with conditions, limitations, and sectoral specificity. 

The examples discussed above show that schedules are especially useful where members agree on broad objectives but disagree on timing, level of ambition, implementation capacity, or policy space—encouraging further negotiation among members concerned.

It is also worth distinguishing modification of an existing schedule, as discussed above, from creating an entirely new schedule in an ongoing negotiation, which requires agreement on the legal architecture itself: what stays in the treaty text and what is left to member-specific commitments.

Public stockholding for food security illustrates the prospective significance of this technique. If India’s proposal on public stockholding, was accepted, this would likely require readjustment of existing domestic support commitment levels. Schedules would then provide the legal instrument for recording those revised (transitory or permanent) levels, once the necessary collective agreement is reached. 

Adding Schedules to Ongoing Negotiations

Schedules could be added to ongoing negotiations where members agree on general principles but disagree on some aspects which can be categorized separately. Schedules can introduce conditions, variable levels of commitment, timing differences, and flexibilities without preventing agreement on core treaty disciplines. 

Fisheries Subsidies II could possibly benefit from using schedules. The treaty text could establish core disciplines or principles on harmful subsidies, while schedules could record member-specific commitments on subsidy ceilings or levels, phase-down periods, temporary management programmes, or exemptions for artisanal and small-scale fishing. These schedules would be negotiated bilaterally but could expand multilaterally. In this sense, Fisheries Subsidies II could borrow from the GPA model: common rules would remain in the treaty text, while schedules would calibrate the coverage and conditions of each member’s obligations.

The AoA model is also useful because it shows how to operationalize and record variable non-tariff commitment levels. In agriculture, members scheduled domestic support commitment levels, export subsidy commitments, and reduction commitments over time. Fisheries Subsidies II could also borrow this scheduling logic. Members could schedule maximum subsidy levels and reduction pathways, while the treaty text would set the common disciplines. The TFA model could also be relevant, by linking implementation to capacity and technical assistance. This would not remove the need for common disciplines, but it could make agreement easier by allowing members to undertake binding obligations through tailored and capacity-sensitive commitments.

Using Schedules in New Negotiations

Future WTO agreements could be structured around treaty text combined with schedules. For example, the current Agreement on Electronic Commerce (ECA) does not itself use WTO-style schedules, but selected e-commerce commitments could be integrated through members’ schedules, including paperless trade or digital infrastructure, with transition periods for differentiations in implementation with commitments negotiated by sectors. More importantly, new elements of an extension of the ECA to focus on issues such as market access, national treatment, cross-border data flows, or data localization would also best be handled via schedules. The Côte d'Ivoire proposal in the e-commerce negotiations illustrates this possibility, proposing a TFA-style category self-designation mechanism, though it was not retained in the current ECA.*

The same logic could also apply to sustainability-related negotiations. Fossil fuel subsidy reform could borrow from the agriculture and fisheries models, with schedules recording subsidy ceilings, phase-out pathways, and limited transition arrangement; substantive obligations could indeed be subdivided, for example by mode of delivery or otherwise. This is imperative as fossil fuel subsidies raise climate, pollution, and energy transition concerns, and may require inclusive collective action at the WTO while still accounting for members’ different baseline subsidy levels, energy security needs, and transition costs. Climate-related standards or circular economy measures could use schedules to negotiate and record sectoral coverage, implementation timelines, technical assistance needs, or conditions for regulatory cooperation. These examples show that schedules can be useful not only for market access, but also for regulatory and sustainability implementations with differentiations in scope, capacity, or ambition providing the necessary policy space.

* WTO, Electronic Commerce Negotiations: Updated Consolidated Negotiating Text – December 2022, INF/ECOM/62/Rev.3, 22 December 2022, Section D.5, “Special and Differential Treatment Provisions for Developing Country Members and Least Developed Country Members”, pp. 37–45 (Restricted access).

This note suggests that schedules are not merely technical appendices, but flexible instruments within the WTO system. Their value lies in the fact that their internal organization, categories, and language can be constructed to reflect the policy space that members need. If well designed, they can facilitate adaptation of commitments to the different needs, capacities, and regulatory choices of members, while preserving the integrity of multilateral disciplines. They are especially helpful in unstable trade contexts, where the procedures for changing them, and for agreeing compensation when they are changed, still need to be developed for most non-tariff agreements. 

Even where schedules are binding, the language used within them need not always take the form of immediate and absolute obligations. Schedules can contain softer, principled, or progressive formulations, including best-endeavour and hortatory commitments, as well as transition periods, conditions, qualifications, and capacity-linked provisions. They therefore allow the WTO system to combine binding commitments with flexibility, differentiation, and gradual legal development.

Evaluating trade compensation for non-tariff matters is an old and unresolved issue in GATT/ WTO but all governments would benefit from this issue being settled in practice or more formally to respond to the policy space needs of members. GATS and the GPA schedules show that WTO practice already knows how to build arbitration and calculable compensation into non-tariff schedule modification. The AoA and TFA have no equivalent architecture: absent a specific provision, a member wishing to adjust its non-tariff commitments upward has only the “logic” of Article XXVIII and the 1980 Procedures to borrow from by analogy, and thus needs the consent of interested parties for an amendment.

The right to introduce changes to scheduled commitments should be enhanced so as to provide governments with the agility they need to respond to geopolitical tensions and sustainable development imperatives and adapt. Calculating compensation for changes in regulatory, qualitative, or capacity-linked provisions, including those in schedules, needs to be made possible in order to allow members to respond to domestic and international trade realities. State practice developed in customs unions where several compensation deals were implemented should be further analysed, and learning from them should be encouraged. 

Schedules could help address stalled negotiations, including Fisheries Subsidies II, and structure emerging initiatives such as the ECA. They may also be useful in other areas, including environmental goods and services, vessel-related or fisheries-related overcapacity, steel and aluminium overcapacity, digital services, and data flows. In each case, schedules could allow members to undertake commitments at different levels of ambition while remaining within a common legal framework, in a transparent manner. One important value of schedules lies in their capacity to “operationalize” sustainable development, ease regulatory cooperation, and manage diversity.

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Gabrielle Marceau is Honorary Professor (Emr), University of Geneva; and Visiting Professor, University of Ottawa.

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