Brussels, 10/12/2007 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 4 December, the WTO celebrated 6 decades of multilateralism by launching a call to tackle protectionism in its 2007 annual report. In 1995, the WTO took over from the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which came into effect on 1 January 1948 as a result of states' desire to get rid of protectionism, a causal factor in the outbreak of the 2nd World War. In 60 years of multilateralism, world trade has increased 27-fold in volume, three times faster than the rise in world GDP, which increased 8-fold over the same period. In 2005, world goods exports represented 19.4% of the global GDP, compared with 5.5% in 1950. (E.H.)