reservation that legislation presently acceptable under the provisional application of the agreement would remain acceptable under the definitive application of the agreement. The resolution provided, however, that the Contracting Parties would periodically review the progress that contracting parties had made in bringing such "excepted" legislation into conformity with the General Agreement. The resolution entered into force during the 11th Session, after it had been accepted by all the contracting parties.

Protocols of amendment, and Agreement on the Organization for Trade Cooperation

At their Ninth Session in 1954-55, the Contracting Parties conducted a review of the General Agreement to determine to what extent it should be modified in order to attain its objectives more effectively. As a result of the review, the Contracting Parties proposed a series of amendments to the General Agreement, and negotiated an Agreement on the Organization for Trade Cooperation. 48 The proposed amendments (which were incorporated in three protocols), as well as the Agreement on the Organization for Trade Cooperation, were then submitted to the contracting parties for acceptance. By June 30, 1957, the close of the period covered by this report, neither the proposed amendments to the General Agreement nor the Agreement on the Organization for Trade Cooperation had entered into force.

Protocols of rectifications and modifications of schedules, and proposed consolidation of schedules

Tariff concessions negotiated under the General Agreement are incorporated into the agreement by means of the schedules of tariff concessions. A schedule is a listing of all the concessions negotiated-pursuant to the provisions of the General Agreement-by one particular contracting party with other contracting parties. Each such country schedule contains, for each product on which the contracting party has granted a concession, the number under which the product is classified in the tariff of the particular contracting party, a description of the product, and the rate of duty applicable to it. Article II of the General Agreement makes each of the schedules of concessions an integral part of the agreement.

From time to time the Contracting Parties find that the texts of the schedules should be modified formally to take into account changes that have, in fact, become effective by action of the Contracting Parties or in accordance with procedures established by the Contracting Parties.

48 See Operation of the Trade Agreements Program (eighth report), ch. 2.

49 Changes in the schedules may be substantive or nonsubstantive. An example of a substantive change is the modification of a rate of duty pursuant to article XXVIII of the agreement; an example of a nonsubstantive change is the correction of a textual spelling

error.

Accordingly, they prepare protocols of rectifications and modifications, which list the changes necessary to bring the schedules up to date. The protocols, which are then submitted to the individual contracting parties for acceptance, formally enter into force when they have been accepted by all the contracting parties. However, since the modifications or rectifications contained in the protocols have already been placed in effect by action of the Contracting Parties, there is slight incentive for individual contracting parties to "accept" them formally.

On June 30, 1957, the Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Protocols of Rectifications and Modifications, prepared by the Contracting Parties and submitted to the contracting parties during the period 1952-56, had not yet entered into force, but the concessions listed in them had been placed in effect by the contracting parties concerned. The Sixth Protocol of Modifications and Rectifications, which was prepared during the 11th Session, was approved by the Contracting Parties and opened for signature on February 15, 1957. This protocol incorporated changes in the schedules of 22 contracting parties that resulted from the multilateral negotiations at Geneva in 1956.

At the 10th Session, several of the contracting parties expressed serious concern over the complexity of the schedules of concessions in the General Agreement. They pointed out that the original concessions and the subsequent rectifications and modifications were scattered among more than 20 legal instruments and several GATT documents. The Contracting Parties, therefore, explored the possibility of preparing a set of up-to-date, consolidated schedules. Toward the close of the session they adopted a tentative plan to prepare such consolidated schedules, and agreed to consider the plan again at their 11th Session in 1956.

By the 11th Session, copies of new consolidated schedules for several individual contracting parties were available. As completion of those for most of the contracting parties had been delayed, however, the Contracting Parties deferred until the 12th Session consideration of the form in which they will be published and of a plan for keeping them up to date. Election of Chairman and Vice Chairmen of the Contracting Parties

At the beginning of the 11th Session, the Contracting Parties elected Sir Claude Corea, High Commissioner of Ceylon in the United Kingdom, as Chairman of the Contracting Parties, and Dr. Andrés Vargas Gomez, Director of International Economic Affairs, Cuban Ministry of State, and Mr. Pierre A. Forthomme, Belgian Ambassador to Switzerland, as Vice Chairmen. Sir Claude replaced Mr. L. Dana Wilgress, Canadian representative on the North Atlantic Council.50

50 The North Atlantic Council is the supreme authority of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

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Procedures for intersessional administration of the General Agreement

The General Agreement does not specifically provide for any organization for its administration. Article XXV provides that the contracting parties shall meet from time to time to consider matters arising out of the application of the agreement, but does not provide any mechanism for administering the agreement during the period when the Contracting Parties are not in session. As a result of discussions at their Sixth Session in 1951, the Contracting Parties established-on an experimental basisthe ad hoc Committee for Agenda and Intersessional Business to deal with matters that might require immediate action during the period between the sessions of the Contracting Parties. This arrangement for intersessional administration of the agreement-modified somewhat at the Ninth Session in 1954-55-has since been continued.

The Intersessional Committee, as it is now termed, is authorized to consider matters that require urgent action between sessions, but for which the Contracting Parties have made no special arrangements. The Intersessional Committee also is authorized to establish working parties to consider special problems, and may request the convening of special sessions of the Contracting Parties to consider matters that require their immediate attention. The Committee is also directed to meet 4 to 6 weeks before the opening of each regular session of the Contracting Parties, to prepare the agenda and order of business.

Members of the Committee are selected in such a manner as to insure that the Committee will be representative of the broad geographical areas to which the contracting parties belong and of the different degrees of economic development and divergent economic interests that are to be found among them. At their 11th Session the Contracting Parties reconstituted the Committee and increased its membership from 17 to 18 contracting parties. This they did by electing 17 members and co-opting Denmark. The following contracting parties were elected to the Intersessional Committee: Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Greece, India, Indonesia, Italy, Norway, Pakistan, Peru, the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Because of the rapid progress that six European countries made after the close of the 11th Session in drafting a treaty looking toward the formation of a Common Market, the Intersessional Committee decided to consider questions relating to the proposed arrangement at its meeting in April 1957.51 Because of this important change in the agenda for the meeting, the Committee co-opted-at their request the following contracting parties for the discussion on the Common Market: Austria,

51 The contracting parties involved in the arrangements for the Common Market are Belgium, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. For a detailed discussion of the Common Market, see ch. 4 of this report.

Ceylon, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, the Dominican Republic, Japan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and the Union of South Africa. Represented at the meeting by observers were the following countries that are not contracting parties to the General Agreement: Ghana (formerly the British Crown Colony of the Gold Coast), Portugal, Switzerland, and Yugoslavia.

Financial and budgetary matters

At their 11th Session, the Contracting Parties approved the audit of the 1955 accounts and the report by the Executive Secretary on the financing of the 1956 budget. They also adopted an estimated budget of $451,600 for 1957, the United States contribution to which was $74,520. As has been true for the past 4 years, the budget estimate for the year ahead (1957) was higher than that for the previous year. The higher budget resulted from a permanent increase in the workload of the GATT Secretariat.

During the 10th Session, considerable sentiment developed for a review of the then existing system of computing financial contributions by the contracting parties to the General Agreement. Originally, contributions were based on the shares of each of the contracting parties in the total foreign trade of the Contracting Parties during the period 1949-53. As important changes have taken place since then in the respective trade shares of individual contracting parties, the Contracting Parties agreed to examine at their next session the question of revising the scale of contributions.

At the 11th Session the Contracting Parties revised the scale of contributions for the 1957 budget. The revised scale was based on the total external trade of the Contracting Parties for 1953-55-the latest 3 years for which adequate statistics were available. In addition, the Contracting Parties specified a minimum contribution of $2,000 for those individual contracting parties whose share of the total trade of the Contracting Parties was less than 0.55 percent. The Contracting Parties also decided that, before each annual session, the Secretariat should prepare a draft scale of contributions based on the total foreign trade of the Contracting Parties during the last 3 consecutive years for which adequate statistics were available. On the basis of this draft, the Contracting Parties will decide whether changes in the shares of individual contracting parties in the total trade of the Contracting Parties have been significant enough to require an adjustment of the scale of contributions for the following year.

Attendance of foreign ministers at sessions of the Contracting Parties

In September 1956 the Executive Secretary of the Contracting Parties proposed to the Intersessional Committee that the foreign ministers of the contracting parties attend the 11th Session and succeeding sessions.

In his opinion, attendance of the foreign ministers would make possible a wider exchange of views than was otherwise possible and would contribute to a more effective operation of the General Agreement. As a result of inquiries, however, it was found that such a ministerial meeting could not be arranged for the 11th Session.

During the 11th Session the Contracting Parties agreed that meetings of the foreign ministers, held in the early stages of succeeding sessions, would be highly advantageous. They decided, therefore, to arrange for such a ministerial meeting at their 12th Session in 1957, the ministers themselves to decide at that time whether they would hold meetings at subsequent sessions.