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Frieder Roessler and the Advisory Centre on WTO Law – the Culmination of a Career

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2025

Niall Meagher*
Affiliation:
Advisory Centre on WTO Law, Geneve, Switzerland

Extract

The signing of the Agreement Establishing the Advisory Centre on WTO Law (ACWL) was the most positive outcome to occur during WTO's Seattle Ministerial Conference in 1999. After two years of preparatory work, the ACWL then began operations in 2001.

Information

Type
Reflective Essay
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Secretariat of the World Trade Organization

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Footnotes

*

The author succeeded Frieder Roessler as Executive Director of the ACWL in 2012. He was Senior Counsel at the ACWL from 2004–2012.

References

1 H.E. Gerrit Ybema (1999) Foreign Minister of the Netherlands, Speech at the Signing Ceremony of the ACWL, Seattle, www.acwl.ch/download/basic_documents/Documents-Signing-Ceremony-of-ACWL-Seattle-1999.pdf.

2 F. Roessler, ‘The Operations of the ACWL’, in The ACWL at Ten: Looking Back, Looking Forward, p. 16, www.acwl.ch/wp-content/uploads/acwl_at_ten.pdf (last accessed 25 September 2024).

3 Speech of WTO Director-General Michael Moore at the Inauguration Ceremony of the ACWL, 5 October 2001, www.acwl.ch/milestones/ (last accessed 25 September 2024).

4 See, e.g., Petersman, E.-U. (2018) ‘Book Review of Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism’, Journal of International Economic Law 21, 915921CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Roessler, F. (2015) ‘The Role of Law in International Trade Relations and the Establishment of the Legal Affairs Division of the GATT’, in Marceau, G. (ed.), A History of Law and Lawyers in the GATT/WTO. Cambridge, 161173, at 161CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Harvard University Press, Cambridge 2018) (hereafter ‘Globalists’).

7 Roessler, F. (2019) ‘Democracy, Redistribution and the WTO: A Comment on Quinn Slobodian's book Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism’, World Trade Review 18(2), 353359CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 356 (hereinafter ‘Globalists review’).

8 Globalists, page 246.

9 ‘Special and Differential Treatment of Developing Countries under the WTO Dispute Settlement System’, remarks by F. Roessler, Conference on Improvements and Clarifications of the WTO Dispute Settlement System, European University Institute, Florence 13–14 September 2002.

10 Globalists review, p. 358.

11 Roessler, F. (2015) ‘Changes in the Jurisprudence of the WTO Appellate Body during the Past 20 Years’, Journal of International Trade Law and Policy 14(3), 129146, 130CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Ibid., p. 143.

13 Ibid.