The agreement between Australia and New Zealand is one of them. Yes, that`s right. It is the committee of all WTO members that oversees free trade agreements. These “interim” agreements can be used if customs duties expire over a period of time and are not eliminated overnight. For example, when the Treaty of Rome first entered into force in 1957, it did not fit the definition of a customs union, as this definition requires tariffs between members to be zero. But they didn`t fall to zero until the end of phasing in 1968. Article 24 is a provision of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). GATT is a World Trade Organization (WTO) agreement to reduce tariffs and other barriers to trade for products around the world. Normally, according to WTO rules, tariffs and other barriers to products from other countries must be the same for all WTO members. This is called the most-favoured-nation principle. However, the GATT offers members several opportunities to negotiate agreements among themselves aimed at selectively removing obstacles, without having to grant the same benefits to all WTO members: one of them is Article 24. Their main objective is to ensure that these agreements do not hinder other WTO members. In principle, Article 24 also allows members to enter into “interim arrangements” to allow them to benefit from preferential treatment prior to the implementation of a comprehensive agreement.

It has been updated regularly over the decades. When the WTO was created in 1995 to adopt the multilateral trading system, GATT remained the main trade agreement. The UK could (with the EU`s agreement) attempt a similar tactic – i.e. agree on a comprehensive free trade agreement – and circumvent the high level of control. This could be politically damaging to both the UK and the EU. Such a free trade agreement will take some time, especially if the UK has indicated that it wants to have different rules than the EU. However, records of notifications and discussions in the WTO indicate that the distinction between Interim Agreements and Interim Agreements is not viewed in this way in the WTO (see tweets at the end). . . .