Introduction

All laws involve some unsettled aspects, and ambiguity may even be deliberate, to accommodate the views of different individuals or groups involved in drafting. The drafters of the WTO agreements recognised that they could not anticipate every issue that might arise in future, revealing ambiguities in the text. Accordingly, one of the purposes of the WTO dispute settlement system is to clarify the meaning of the provisions and hence provide security and predictability in international trade. One possible solution to the difficulties with the current treatment of cultural products under WTO law is to leave the relevant provisions as they stand, while allowing the organs of WTO dispute settlement to resolve uncertainties where appropriate and, perhaps, to develop pragmatic compromises in the absence of explicit guidance in the text. Effectively, this is the approach that WTO Members have taken to this problemsince the WTO agreements came into force on 1 January 1995. Indeed, this is the way that WTO Members have dealt with most problems and ambiguities in the WTO agreements since the mid- 1990s. However, only one dispute on cultural products has proceeded to the stage of a Panel Report being circulated, namely Canada – Periodicals. The DSB adopted the Panel and Appellate Body Reports in that dispute on 30 July 1997. This leaves considerable scope for speculation about how other cultural policy measures would be assessed if challenged in future.