An international agreement on trade in services, arrived at in 1994 as part of the Uruguay Round of negotiations under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The GATS is very limited in scope: it is a long way from providing for worldwide market access and ‘national’, that is non-discriminatory, treatment for foreign providers of services. Its provisions apply only to services included by members in a positive list: this is around half of all services in high-income countries and a very small proportion elsewhere. Even within these positive lists there are numerous exceptions. As with the GATT, a prolonged series of further negotiations seems likely to be needed before anything approaching free trade in services is achieved.