Criteria for Non-OECD Member Accession once the MAI is in Force -- General Principles14 Sample Clauses

Criteria for Non-OECD Member Accession once the MAI is in Force -- General Principles14. As for the eligibility of non-OECD Members to accede to the MAI once the Agreement has come into force, during the 1994/95 CIME/CMIT programme of analytical work there appeared to be consensus on four points, which were subsequently confirmed either explicitly or implicitly in the 1995 negotiating mandate, as follows: -- accession would be subject to agreement by all existing Parties to the instrument; -- it would be entirely independent to OECD membership; -- it would be open to non-members willing and able to take on its obligations; and, -- some sort of examination by the Parties, probably similar in essence to OECD examinations under the Codes/NTI and/or the WTO accession process, would be required to assess how aspiring Parties measured up relative to those obligations and to allow aspiring Parties to negotiate the precise terms of their adherence (although accession to the MAI would, clearly, not then be subject to approval by the OECD Council). Assuming that all Parties would be required to accept all the general obligations of the MAI and that accession negotiations would therefore focus primarily on proposed reservations, a number of questions relative to the key matter of "taking on its obligations" require further consideration. Various possible approaches were identified during the 1994/95 programme of analytical work and will be considered further by the Negotiating Group later this year. The key issues which emerge are the (related) ones of: -- whether there would be “core” conditions for non-Member accessions; and, -- whether there would be some sort of “benchmark” (de facto or otherwise) defining (quantitatively and qualitatively) the acceptable limit of reservations and therefore the minimum requirement for accession beyond the “core” conditions. -- the three main lines of thinking which can be drawn from the work to date are: that “core” conditions for accession to MAI will emerge towards the end of the negotiating mandate as participants in the NG determine the terms of their own adherence; -- that in practice there will then almost certainly be at least a de facto “benchmark” beyond that, albeit one which may not be precisely defined but which would be no lower than the lowest overall standard of liberalisation set by an existing Party; and, -- that some sort of transition period might be envisaged for non-OECD Members adhering to the MAI by which additional time-limited reservations would allow accession at a level of overall liberalis...