The Multi-Party Interim Appeal Arbitration Arrangement (MPIA) is a workaround mechanism created by a group of WTO members to preserve binding two-stage dispute settlement while the WTO's Appellate Body remains paralyzed. Since December 2019, the Appellate Body has been unable to hear new appeals because the United States has blocked the appointment of new members, leaving panel reports vulnerable to being "appealed into the void" — appealed to a body that cannot rule, thereby blocking adoption.
The MPIA was notified to the WTO Dispute Settlement Body in April 2020 by an initial group including the European Union, China, Canada, Australia, Brazil, and several other members. It uses Article 25 of the WTO Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU), which authorizes arbitration as an alternative means of dispute resolution, to replicate appellate review among participating members. Key features include:
- A standing pool of ten arbitrators from which three are drawn per appeal.
- Procedures modeled closely on Appellate Body practice, including a 90-day target for issuing awards.
- Binding awards enforceable through the regular DSU compliance and retaliation framework.
Participation is opt-in: the MPIA only applies between members that have both joined the arrangement. The United States has not joined and has criticized the underlying Appellate Body for alleged judicial overreach, particularly on trade remedies and the "zeroing" methodology in anti-dumping cases.
Several MPIA awards have been issued, including in disputes involving Colombia, the EU, Turkey, and Costa Rica on agricultural and industrial goods. The arrangement is explicitly interim: signatories state it will remain in force only until the Appellate Body is restored. Reform negotiations under the WTO's dispute settlement reform mandate, agreed at the 12th Ministerial Conference (MC12) in June 2022, are ongoing, with members committing to have a fully functioning system "accessible to all" by 2024 — a deadline that has not been met.
The MPIA is significant as a test case for plurilateral institution-building inside a stalled multilateral body.
Example
In December 2022, an MPIA arbitration panel issued an award in the dispute between Colombia and the EU over frozen fries (DS591), the first appeal-stage ruling delivered under the arrangement.