The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) is a treaty and a concept that forms a core part of the World Trade Organization (WTO) agreements, specifically included in Annex 1B of the Marrakesh Agreement. It entered into force in January 1995, following the conclusion of the Uruguay Round negotiations (1986–1994). The treaty was created to extend the multilateral trading system to the service sector, solving the problem of barriers like foreign ownership caps and licensing hurdles that were distorting a growing share of world commerce, much like the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) did for merchandise trade.
GATS works through a framework text, annexes, and individual member Schedules of Specific Commitments. The fundamental principle of Most-Favoured-Nation (MFN) treatment, outlined in Article II, applies across all service sectors, requiring a member to treat all other members' services and suppliers equally. However, the principles of National Treatment (Article XVII) and Market Access (Article XVI) only apply to the specific sectors a member has listed in its Schedule. The agreement defines four modes of supply for services: Cross-border trade (Mode 1), Consumption abroad (Mode 2), Commercial presence (Mode 3), and Presence of natural persons (Mode 4). The Council for Trade in Services (CTS) oversees the implementation of GATS.
While the core agreement remains, negotiations for a services-only pact, the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA), which arose from stalled GATS talks, collapsed in December 2016. Currently, there is an effort to introduce new "Domestic Regulation" (DR) rules under GATS Article VI:4 to limit the types of regulations governments can apply to service suppliers.