The World Trade Organisation (WTO) said on Tuesday member countries have agreed to ease approval of the rapidly growing number of regional trade pacts - often seen as a threat to the body's future.
The decision, reached in a group negotiating on changes to trade rules, was hailed by WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy as potentially "a good omen" for the deeply troubled Doha Round of global trade liberalisation talks.
Officials said it opens the way for clearing a huge backlog of some 200 regional trade agreements, or RTAs, many of which have been awaiting the WTO green light for a decade or more, and for fast action in accepting new ones. "This decision will help break the current logjam in the WTO on regional trade agreements," Lamy said in a statement.
He said the breakthrough came at "a critical juncture" in the Round, launched in 2001 and deadlocked over farm trade and goods tariffs half a year before its deadline for completion.
"Hopefully, this decision is a good omen for much-needed progress in other areas of the talks, such as agriculture and industrial goods trade, where agreement is urgently needed," added Lamy, currently travelling world capitals in search of a breakthrough on the Round. RTAs can range from vast trading groupings like the 25-member European Union and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) linking the United States, Canada and Mexico to accords between two or three small economies.
The absence of WTO approval does not prevent the functioning of an RTA. But it leaves their members open to challenge - and possibly sanctions - from other WTO countries who might feel they are giving each other special treatment which violates the basic rules of the global organisation.
The decision, reached in committee on Monday, provides for WTO economists to present an analysis of each agreement, with trade statistics, which will make it easier for smaller countries to determine how an RTA might affect their trade. Until now, members have simply been presented with the often complex texts of such agreements.
Only one agreement - between the Czech Republic and Slovakia after the break-up of their former unified state in the early 1990s - has been approved in the last decade.
Many analysts have seen the logjam, combined with the problems of the Doha Round, as pushing more and more countries to pay less attention to the WTO's global accords and more on getting good agreements with their main trading partners.
Past WTO chiefs have voiced concern that RTAs could undermine the entire international trading system, and its rules, as embodied in the WTO.
In his statement, Lamy signalled hope that this threat was now partially removed.
The decision - whose approval by the entire WTO membership is expected to be a formality - "is an important step towards ensuring that RTAs become building blocks, not stumbling blocks, to world trade," he said.
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