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BREGT NATENS – JAN WOUTERS CYIL 4 ȍ2013Ȏ been proposals on countervailing procedures, although under the existing rules, such measures are likely to be incompatible with the MFN obligation. 50 The difficulties regarding subsidy disciplines negotiations also influence ESM negotiations as the current situation in which subsidy measures are only disciplined indirectly and can be remedied through GATS exceptions means the need for ESM is much less pressing. 51 As concerns the legal nature of such disciplines, Article XV GATS explicitly appears to require the outcome of negotiations to be multilateral as opposed to Articles X and XIII GATS which only require multilateral negotiations, not multilateral disciplines. 3. The second track: bi- and plurilateral negotiations on market access The second negotiating track in the DDA consists of the bi- and plurilateral negotiations on market access, for which the Council for Trade in Services has a coordinating role. The negotiations are essentially structured around the request offer approach: on the one hand, Members submit their liberalisation requests to other Members while, on the other hand, Members propose liberalisation offers in the form of an improved schedule of commitments. Although the best offers currently on the negotiating table improve substantively on existing commitments, these improvements still appear to be sensitively lower than the actual trade policy of Members. 52 Hence, there is hesitance to commit to the existing levels of liberalisation. Although Members have pointed out they might increase their offer, this situation leaves the WTO lagging behind, codifying liberalisation at a level that is sensitively below existing practice, rather than substantively aiding liberalisation of trade in services. Although this is not necessarily a bad thing and may even be an aim of the DDA, 53 especially considering the existing fragmented landscape of services liberalisation, this does not take away from the urgency of concluding the current negotiations with sufficient progression compared to the conclusion of GATS. Moreover, there appears to be a substantial gap between requests and offers with regard to sectoral coverage and commitment level. 54 The number of requests and their content are kept confidential for political and negotiation technical reasons. 55 The number of offers and their content on the other hand, is made available: seventy-one initial conditional offers and thirty-one revised 50 Rudolf Adlung, ‘Negotiations on Safeguards and Subsidies in Services: A Never-Ending Story?’ (2007) 10 Journal of International Economic Law 235, 239. 51 ibid . 52 Jara and Domínguez 121. 53 Bernard M Hoekman, Will Martin and Aaditya Mattoo, ‘Conclude Doha: It Matters!’ (2010) 9 World Trade Review 505, 526. 54 This also holds true for negotiations on MFN exemptions.TN/S/36, Negotiations on Trade in Services (Report by the Chairman of the Council for Trade in Services 21 April 2011) 6. 55 Jara and Domínguez 116. The EU has circulated an executive summary on its requests, see: European Union, ‘Summary of the EC’s Revised Requests to Third Countries in the Services Negotiations under the DDA’ (2005) accessed 20 August 2012.