WTO Dispute Settlement Mechanism(2)/刘成伟(56)
The 1952 Panel Report on Germany - Sardines also based a non-violation finding on an ‘action of the German Government, which resulted in upsetting the competitive relationship between [different members of the same fish family that] could not reasonably have been anticipated by the Norwegian Government at the time it negotiated for tariff reductions on [fish]’. In so finding, the panel noted that Norway ‘had reason to assume’ that the fish they were interested in would not be treated less favourably.
Two GATT study groups elaborated these concepts in the context of subsidies, in each case focusing on whether a party had reasonable expectations that certain treatment would continue. In 1955, a working party wrote:
‘So far as domestic subsidies are concerned, it was agreed that a contracting party which has negotiated a concession under Article II may be assumed, for the purpose of Article XXIII, to have a reasonable expectation, failing evidence to the contrary, that the value of the concession will not be nullified or impaired by the contracting party which granted the concession by the subsequent introduction or increase of a domestic subsidy on the product concerned’.