Recall from this post that SCM Agreement Article 1.1(a)(1) refers to a "public body" in the context of defining "financial contribution":
(a)(1) there is a financial contribution by a government or any public body within the territory of a Member (referred to in this Agreement as "government")
The meaning of "public body" was an important issue in the case, and there were a number of aspects to the interpretation. In trying to determine the meaning of the term myself, I figured there would be at least a few useful definitions out there. However, after looking in all the places I could think of to look, I didn't find much.
This led me to wonder, where do WTO terms like this one come from? I found a similar reference to "public body" in the Tokyo Round Subsidies Code:
FN. 22 In this Agreement, the term "subsidies" shall be deemed to include subsidies granted by any government or any public body within the territory of a signatory. ...
Most likely, the SCM Agreement language was taken from the Subsidies Code. Is that the first time it was used, though? I'm not sure. I didn't find anything else, but I didn't look everywhere. Regardless, the term had to originate somewhere, with someone. Isn't there some record of what the drafters meant? Actual people come up with these terms. What did the drafters think the term "public body" meant? It seems strange that there is so little record of all this.
Of course, knowing the Subsidies Code meaning doesn't necessarily answer the question of what the SCM Agreement term means. There's context present with the SCM Agreement that wasn't there for the Subsidies Code. But still, it does give us some insight.
