This paper studies how fisheries services are classified in the World Trade Organization (WTO) framework for trade in services and discusses the potential impact of unclear classifications. The WTO plays a key role in regulation and assessment in the area of trade in services, mainly due to the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), which contains the only set of multilateral rules managing such trade internationally. The purpose of GATS is to create a credible and reliable system of international trade rules that ensures fair treatment of all participants. Through negotiations, individual countries establish commitments to provide market access and limiting national treatment in various service sectors. During such negotiations, the classification of services is a prerequisite to ensure unambiguous and comparable commitments. However, the classification list used by the WTO, namely the W/120, is based on, and corresponds to, old versions of other classification lists, leading to unclear classifications. This lack of clarity in sectoral classifications makes policy analysis unnecessarily difficult and creates a risk that trade agreements may be interpreted differently by different parties.

中文翻译：

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在WTO和GATS框架下的渔业服务贸易

本文研究了如何在世界贸易组织（WTO）的服务贸易框架中对渔业服务进行分类，并讨论了分类不明确的潜在影响。世贸组织在服务贸易领域的监管和评估中起着关键作用，这主要归功于《服务贸易总协定》（GATS），该协定载有国际上管理此类贸易的唯一一套多边规则。GATS的目的是建立一个可靠和可靠的国际贸易规则体系，以确保公平对待所有参与者。通过谈判，各个国家确立了提供市场准入和限制国民待遇的承诺在各个服务领域。在此类谈判期间，服务分类是确保明确和可比承诺的前提。但是，WTO使用的分类列表，即W / 120，是基于并对应于其他分类列表的旧版本的，从而导致分类不明确。部门分类的不明确性使政策分析变得不必要地困难，并带来了由不同各方对贸易协定进行不同解释的风险。