The Possibility of GPA Accession by Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE: Legal Challenges and Reform Incentives

Submitted: 13 April 2025
Accepted: 05 July 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.70139/rolacc.2025.1.1

Marwa Semhat
Assistant Professor, Lusail University, Qatar
msemhat@lu.edu.qa

ABSTRACT
This paper explores the legal rationale for the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member states’ accession to the Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) of the World Trade Organization (WTO) as a strategic legal instrument for promoting anti-corruption reforms and strengthening the rule of law in the region. Despite ongoing efforts aiming to modernize procurement legislative frameworks, GCC countries continue to face challenges related to transparency and accountability. The article analyzes how the GPA’s legal obligations such as transparency, non-discrimination, fairness and review procedures, can serve as a normative framework for substantive legal and institutional reforms in procurement systems of the GCC. Grounded in liberal institutionalist theory and rule of law scholarship, the study adopts a comparative doctrinal legal methodology, combining treaty analysis, legislative review, and reference to governance indicators. Through the analysis of the legal architecture of the GPA and an evaluation of its compatibility with existing procurement laws in Qatar, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia, this article demonstrates how GPA accession can serve broader governance objectives in the region. The study also identifies key legal and political hurdles for GCC members implying that accession to the GPA comes with legal costs and structural challenges which cannot be understated. In this regard, the article proposes a roadmap for leveraging GPA obligations not as an immediate goal, but as a strategic legal transitional pathway to foster a more transparent, rules-based procurement environment.

Keywords
GPA; WTO; procurement; transparency; anti-corruption; GCC

© 2025 Semhat, licensee LU Press. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license CC BY 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Cite this article as: Semhat M. The Possibility of GPA Accession by Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE: Legal Challenges and Reform Incentives, Rule of Law and Anti-Corruption Center Journal, 2025:1, https://doi.org/10.70139/rolacc.2025.1.1

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