In principle, all WTO agreements and arrangements on trade in goods apply to agriculture, including GATT 1994 and WTO agreements on issues such as customs valuation, import certificate procedures, preshipment inspections, early protection measures, subsidies and technical barriers to trade. However, in the event of a conflict between these agreements and the Convention on Agriculture, priority shall be given to the provisions of the Agreement on Agriculture. Wto agreements on trade in services and trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights also apply to agriculture. The General Tariff Agreement and the Trade Agreement was a free trade agreement that eliminated tariffs and increased international trade. Gatt was the first multilateral free trade agreement in the world to govern a significant share of international trade between 1 January 1948 and 1 January 1995. The agreement ended when it was replaced by the more robust World Trade Organization (WTO). The CAP is also affected by concessions granted to agriculture to a large number of countries under several multilateral and bilateral agreements, as well as unilateral derogations granted under the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP). These preferential agreements explain the high level of EU agricultural imports from developing countries (3.2.10, Table VI). As regards the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), signed in Geneva in 1947, and the Agreement establishing the World Trade Organisation (WTO), signed in Marrakesh in 1994 (OJ L 347, 27.7.1997, p. 1). The European Union and its Member States shall act in accordance with Article 207 (common commercial policy) and Articles 217 and 218 (international agreements) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (5.2.2). The first pillar of the agricultural agreement is „national support“.

AoA subdivide national aid into two categories: trade distortion and non-trade distortion (or mini-trade distortion). The WTO Agreement on Agriculture negotiated in the Uruguay Round (1986-1994) includes the classification of subsidies by „boxes“ according to the consequences of production and trade: amber (most directly related to the level of production), blue (production limitation programmes that still distort trade) and green (minimum distortion). [3] While payments in the yellow box were to be reduced, payments in the green box were exempt from reduction obligations. Detailed rules for green box payments are set out in Annex 2 of the AoA. However, everyone must meet the „basic requirement“ of paragraph 1 not to cause more than a minimal distortion of trade or production and must be provided by a state-funded programme, which does not include transfers from consumers or price support to producers. [1] The agreement has been criticized by civil society groups for reducing customs protection for small farmers, an important source of income in developing countries, while allowing rich countries to continue to subsidize agriculture domestics. Although agriculture has always been covered by the GATT, several important differences have been found in the WTO with regard to the rules applicable to primary agricultural products, unlike industrial products. The GATT 1947 allowed countries to use export subsidies for agricultural precursors, while export subsidies for industrial products were prohibited. The only conditions were that agricultural export subsidies should not be used to cover more than a fair proportion of world exports of the product concerned (Article XVI(3) of the GATT).

GATT rules have also allowed countries to use import restrictions (e.g. .