Marrakesh Agreement

The Marrakesh Agreement, signed in Marrakech, Morocco, in 1994, established the World Trade Organization, which came into being upon its entry into force on January 1, 1995. The Marrakesh Agreement developed out of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which it includes; but it supplemented it with several other agreements, on such issues as trade in services, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, trade-related aspects of intellectual property, and technical barriers to trade. It also established a new, more efficient and legally binding means of dispute resolution. The various agreements which make up the Marrakesh Agreement combine as an indivisible whole; no entity can be party to any one agreement without being party to them all.