Mandated
Negotiations back
to topAt
the General Council's meeting of 7 February, WTO Members
confirmed that the mandated negotiations on agriculture
and services had started as scheduled on 1 January 2000.
This is an achievement which must not be under-rated;
together agriculture and services account for over 60% of
world output, and they span the whole range of human
economic activity from the most traditional to the
leading edge of the new high-tech economy. They cover the
most widespread form of employment and also the sectors
of fastest growth in job creation.
Members
also agreed on organizational aspects of these
negotiations, and noted other elements of the mandated
work programme, such as the negotiations on geographical
indications under the TRIPS Agreement and reviews of
various other agreements.
Agriculture
At
the first negotiating session in March, governments
reached agreement on a programme for the first phase of
the negotiations for continuing the reform process for
trade in agriculture. This includes the tabling of
negotiating proposals in the course of this year, with
scope for the tabling of further or more detailed
proposals in the run up to a stock-taking exercise which
is to be undertaken at the meeting in March 2001.
In
fact, by the time of the second negotiating session in
June, a large number of participants, half of whom are
developing country Members, had already submitted
proposals well ahead of the end-year deadline. In total
forty-five governments (i.e. almost one third of the
WTO’s entire membership) had submitted proposals.
The June meeting, which was attended by many high level,
capital-based officials, turned into a surprisingly
intense initial examination of these proposals. This
examination is to be completed at the next negotiating
session.
Many
more proposals can be expected over the coming months,
including additional or more comprehensive proposals from
governments which tabled proposals at the June
negotiating session. Further negotiating sessions are
scheduled in September and November 2000, plus an
additional session envisaged prior to the March 2001
stock-taking exercise.
(The
mandate for the current agriculture negotiations comes
from Article 20 of the Agreement, and was part of the
deal for reforming agricultural trade that was struck in
the Uruguay Round, which ended in 1994. Details,
including the current proposals and statements in
response, can be found on the WTO website www.wto.org.
Click on “trade
topics”
and “agriculture”.)
Services
There
has been a positive and encouraging start to the services
negotiations with a full commitment by all members to a
heavy and demanding work programme.
This
year's work concentrates on rule-making, in areas like
safeguards and domestic regulation. Negotiations for new
commitments – the market access element – will
start next year. Three 10-day periods of negotiation,
including meetings of the relevant WTO bodies and
bilaterals have been held in April, May and July, and
there will be further sessions in October and December.
Agreement has been reached on a roadmap for the
organisation of work until March of next year, and
guidelines and procedures for the negotiations are being
developed.
Proposals
are being tabled by delegations, notably a proposal on
tourism, proposals by the EC and Australia on cluster
approaches and a proposal by the United States on a
framework and objectives for the negotiations.
WTO
Member Governments have carried out the prescribed review
of MFN exemptions over two meetings, the first in May and
the second in July. The purpose of this review was to
examine whether the conditions that had created the need
for exemptions continued to prevail. These meetings
provided more information on governments' exemptions and
are distinct from the future expected negotiations on the
termination of existing exemptions. A significant amount
of information was provided as a result of this session.
The
four subsidiary bodies of the Council for Trade in
Services are all working on subjects that feed into the
negotiations. Noteworthy are activities in the Committee
on Specific Commitments. In April 2000, the Committee
adopted the text of the procedures for “the
certification of rectifications or improvements to
schedules of specific commitments”. These are
designed for the submission of technical changes or
autonomous improvements by governments of their services
schedules. For example they will allow a government who
undertakes autonomous liberalisation to convert it into a
GATS commitment. The procedures were adopted by the
Council on 14 April. The committee also approved, ad
referendum, the draft format of the electronic schedules
and the procedures for their verification and
circulation. The electronic schedules, in CD and later in
internet form, will constitute essential practical
negotiating tools for the negotiations as they will be
the only place where the totality of existing commitments
of governments will be recorded and compiled.
At
its meeting on 26 May 2000, the Council adopted Decisions
to reopen the Fourth Protocol (relating to
telecommunications) for acceptance by Dominica, and the
Fifth Protocol (relating to financial services) for
acceptance by Ghana.
A
two-day seminar took place at the Secretariat on 10 and
11 May to help delegations prepare for the negotiations
by providing a detailed briefing on the GATS and
negotiating issues that might arise.
Work
has begun on the review of the GATS Annex on Air
Transport Services, which is to consider the possible
further application of the Agreement in this sector. The
first expert meeting on the subject will take place on
28-29 September.
Intellectual
property (TRIPS)
The
expression “mandated negotiations” does not
refer only to agriculture and services. One negotiation
and several reviews, some of which might lead to
negotiations, are currently underway in the TRIPS
Council. These discussions will continue over the coming
months.
The
TRIPS Agreement’s mandated negotiations are for a
notification and registration system for geographical
indications (which relate to place names or words
associated with places, used to describe the type,
characteristics and quality of products). The agreement
does not specify when the talks should start, but the
negotiations are already underway, with two proposals on
the table.
Under
separate provisions of the agreement, the application of
the agreement’s section on geographical indications
is being reviewed. Some governments have called for more
products to be given the higher level of intellectual
property protection that is currently given only to
geographical indications for wines and spirits. They
argue that the TRIPS Agreement provides a mandate to
negotiate this, although there is some disagreement over
this view.
The
TRIPS Council has also been reviewing provisions dealing
with the protection of biotechnology inventions and new
plant varieties(Article 27.3(b)). The discussions have
ranged from a number of specific issues relating to the
way in which these provisions are being implemented and
the meaning of the specific terms contained in them, to
broader policy issues relating to such matters as the
relationship with the preservation and sustainable use of
biodiversity and the protection of traditional knowledge.
Other
issues are also being reviewed, including the provisions
on “non-violation” cases. And the entire TRIPS
Agreement is also under review this year.
“Confidence-building”
measures back
to top
On
7 February, the General Council gave its Chairman and the
Director-General a mandate to consult on a number of
issues where early progress is important to building
confidence after the Seattle setback. These were:
- Measures
in favour of least-developed countries
- Capacity-building
through technical co-operation
- Implementation
issues and concerns, including transition periods
- Internal
transparency and fuller participation of Members
On
all these points the Chairman and the Director-General
reported significant progress to the 3 and 8 May General
Council meeting.
Implementation
issues and concerns, including transition periods
aFollowing
the Director-General's report in May, the General Council
decided to establish an Implementation Review Mechanism,
to address the wider range of concerns related to the
implementation of existing WTO agreements. This is being
done in Special Sessions of the General Council, the
first of which took place on 22 June and 3 July. At this
first session, the Council discussed proposals from a
number of developing countries relating to implementation
issues, which had been presented in the preparatory
process for the Third Ministerial Conference. As a result
of this debate, consultations will be held from
mid-September to find adequate solutions to the concerns
expressed. Further Special Sessions are scheduled for
October and December.
The
establishment of this Implementation Review Mechanism,
with a mandate to seek solutions and take decisions for
appropriate action, is a very important step towards
reaching agreement on a set of issues which became a
major difficulty before the Third Ministerial Conference.
It potentially touches upon a broad range of areas in the
WTO's work. Members have committed themselves to engage
in it constructively.
Regarding
transition period issues -- the WTO provisions that
lapsed and the deadlines that expired on 31 December 1999
-- the General Council also took a decision in May
setting out a framework for the consideration of
transition period problems in the TRIMs (trade-related
investment measures) area. Extensions of the five-year
transition period have been requested by Argentina,
Chile, Colombia, Malaysia, Mexico, Pakistan, Philippines,
Romania and Thailand. Pursuant to this decision and to
Article 5.3 of the TRIMs Agreement, a number of requests
for extension of the TRIMs transition period are
currently being considered by the Council for Trade in
Goods.
In
the customs valuation area, the Director-General noted
that the process of examination and approval of requests
for extensions of the transition period by developing
countries had, in general, been proceeding well in the
Committee on Customs Valuation. Much emphasis has been
placed in the Committee during the year on implementation
by developing countries which had invoked the five-year
delay period. Of the 45 Members which were due to
implement from 1 January to August 2000, the Committee
has agreed to 13 requests for extensions of the delay
period and four additional requests are pending
consideration. In addition, the Committee is actively
discussing the question of how technical assistance can
be better formulated to address the growing demand for
assistance in meeting implementation needs in this area.
Transparency
During
the preparatory process for the Seattle Ministerial
Conference as well as at the conference itself, a number
of delegations, especially smaller ones, expressed
certain misgivings about the nature of the consultative
processes. Although similar concerns had been voiced at
the Singapore Ministerial Conference in 1996 it was clear
that the Seattle experience required the WTO to look
closer at its working methods. As a result, the General
Council, at its meeting of 7 - 8 February 2000 identified
the issue of internal transparency and effective
participation of Members as one of the priority issues to
be addressed in the first six months of the year.
Since
then the Chairman of the General Council has conducted an
intensive series of open-ended consultations on how to
improve internal transparency. This process was initiated
by an invitation to Members for specific suggestions on
how to make the consultative processes in the WTO more
transparent and inclusive. In total some 19 contributions
from individual or groups of countries were received and
these, as well as a Secretariat compilation of the main
points raised by delegations, have served as the basis
for discussions at six meetings of the full membership.
In addition, the Chairman presented a short discussion
paper in which he highlighted a number of issues where he
saw a convergence of opinion. In his paper the Chairman
focused on the fact that Members in general do not see
anything fundamentally wrong with the multilateral
trading system and that informal consultations continue
to be a useful tool, provided that certain improvements
in transparency were applied.
On
17 July the Chairman provided Members with a progress
report which emphasized the general view that significant
improvements in the consultative processes have taken
place over the past six months. He emphasized that while
such progress was important much work remained to be
done, in particular in the area of preparation and
organization of Ministerial Conferences. The Chairman
will pursue further consultations in the autumn.
Least-Developed
countries (LDCs)
At
the 3 May General Council meeting, WTO Members took note
of the Director-General's report that 13 Members –
including developing and transition economies – had
taken, or planned to take, measures to improve access to
their markets for products of least-developed countries.
The
Director-General also reported that he would continue
working to improve the functioning of the Integrated
Framework for Trade-Related Technical Assistance for
Least-Developed Countries (IF) to ensure that it became
an effective instrument of support for the trade-related
aspects of the development and poverty reduction
strategies of LDCs. This is an initiative to coordinate
the provision of technical assistance and
capacity-building to LDCs through six core agencies: WTO,
IMF, ITC, UNCTAD, UNDP and World Bank. As a result of a
meeting of the heads of these agencies in July, agreement
was reached on a number of concrete ways to proceed,
including:
(a)
that trade policy, and trade-related technical assistance
and capacity-building efforts should be an integral part
of the broader development efforts of the least-developed
countries, and that the IF should be a vehicle to help
achieve this objective;
(b)
new arrangements to enhance transparency, accountability
and a heightened sense of ownership by stakeholders in
the IF;
(c)
that different tasks under the IF should be apportioned
to the agencies according to their different skills and
kinds of specialisation; and,
(d)
that the agencies should seek donor support for and
voluntary contributions to an Integrated Framework Trust
Fund.
Capacity-building
through technical cooperation
The
Director-General reported that technical cooperation and
capacity-building is rightly seen as central to the
interests of least-developed countries. However, the
developing-country membership as a whole and the
economies in transition all have a strong interest in
seeing these activities conducted in an effective and
productive way. In fact this is an interest of the whole
membership, and one which the Director-General fully
shares.
Capacity-building
is an essential requirement to enable many Members to
take full advantage of trade opportunities, and this had
been underlined by LDCs in the course of his
consultations and endorsed by other Members. To increase
confidence in the WTO's ability to provide technical
assistance to Members in meeting their obligations under
WTO Agreements it is essential that adequate technical
assistance funds are made available in a timely manner
permitting appropriate forward planning of technical
assistance activities.
Investment,
competition policy and government procurement (working
groups) back
to top
In
three working groups, the WTO has continued to study
actively the issues of the relationship between trade and
investment, the interaction between trade and competition
policy and transparency in government procurement, with
important new papers presented by Members, and to
consider alternatives for future WTO work in these areas.
Trade-related
investment measures (TRIMS) back
to top
A
review of the TRIMS Agreement is currently underway in
the Council for Trade in Goods, as mandated in Article 9
of that Agreement.
Sanitary
and phytosanitary (SPS) measures back
to top
The
first half of 2000 saw agreement on one difficult SPS
issue and the start of discussions on two topics of
considerable importance to a number of Members.
At
its 19-20 June meeting, the SPS Committee agreed on
guidelines to help governments achieve some consistency
in the levels of health risks they apply. Consistency is
required under the SPS agreement, in order to reduce the
temptation to be particularly strict on the safety of
some food products, or on some animal or plant health
risks, for trade protectionist reasons. The new
guidelines are non-binding. They are designed to help
governments adopt and implement SPS measures that are
consistent with the agreement.
The
Committee also examined the issue of special and
differential treatment for developing countries, and has
started discussions on “equivalence”.
Developing
countries are concerned about the implementation of
provisions in the Agreement that more generally allow
them special treatment, including being allowed more time
to adapt to new measures in their export markets.
Proposals on this issue were submitted before the
December 1999 Seattle Ministerial Conference. The issue
is now being discussed in the SPS Committee and will
continue to be on the agenda over the coming months.
Developing
countries in particular have also expressed concern that
the health and safety measures they apply are not being
recognized as equivalent in their export markets. The SPS
Agreement provides that importing countries should not
always require exporting countries to adopt exactly the
same food safety and animal and plant health measures
that apply to domestic producers in the importing
countries, provided they can be satisfied that the level
of health protection they deem to be appropriate is
achieved. In other words, the importing countries’
governments should try to recognize different methods or
criteria adopted in exporting countries, if the health
result is “equivalent” to the importing
countries’ own measures.
Government
procurement (plurilateral agreement)
back
to top
Work
on the plurilateral agreement on Government Procurement
is also being actively pursued. A number of Members have
made proposals for a major overhaul of the text of the
Agreement to make it more simple and user-friendly. There
are also discussions on the expansion of the scope of
coverage of the agreement and the elimination of
discriminatory aspects. Negotiations on the accession to
this Agreement of six additional governments are taking
place.
Trade
facilitation back
to top
Work
on trade facilitation originates in the 1996 mandate of
the Singapore Ministerial Conference “to undertake
exploratory and analytical work, drawing on the work of
other relevant organizations, on the simplification of
trade procedures in order to assess the scope for WTO
rules in this area”. Work in this area is important
as excessive information requirements for import and
export, as well as administrative inefficiencies have
created obstacles that are estimated to cost on average
3-5% of the value of goods trade - a considerable amount
in the light of evermore shrinking tariff levels. What is
more, the losses through inefficiencies are dead-weight
losses, which unlike duties, do not contribute to
government revenue.
Since
Seattle, the Council for Trade in Goods has resumed work
on trade facilitation in two informal meetings. All
delegations have shown a very constructive attitude at
these meetings and appear committed to fully engage in
the coming exploratory and analytical work on the
simplification of trade procedures.
Electronic
commerce back
to top
At
its last meeting before the summer break, the General
Council agreed to reinvigorate the work in the WTO on
electronic commerce on a practical basis and invited four
subsidiary bodies, i.e., the Goods, Services and TRIPS
Councils and the Committee on Trade and Development, to
pick up where they left off in their work in this area
and report back to the General Council in December. The
original mandate of the work programme as adopted by the
General Council on 25 September 1998 was to examine all
trade-related issues relating to global electronic
commerce. The work programme is also to include
consideration of issues relating to the development of
the infrastructure for electronic commerce.
Accessions
back
to top
There
has been a considerable amount of activity on the
accessions front in the course of this year. Two
countries (Jordan and Georgia) have become full WTO
Members in the first part of the year. Albania will also
become a full member on 8 September 2000, bringing the
current membership to 138. These countries have now
extended the WTO system to some 12 million people across
the world.
Two
further countries, Croatia and Oman, have also concluded
their accession negotiations and are expected to become
full members before the end of the year. Negotiations are
in advanced stages for the accession of Lithuania and
Vanuatu and are progressing towards the final phase in
the cases of China and Chinese Taipei.
There
are currently another twenty nine governments in the
process of negotiating their accession to the WTO. All of
these are transitional or developing economies, including
nine least-developed countries. They are seeking
membership of the WTO not just to secure economic gains
in terms of better access to international markets, but
mostly to ensure greater stability and predictability in
their trading relations, leading to better prospects for
foreign investment and economic development.
Dispute
settlement back
to top
Between
1st January and 31 July 2000, eighteen new cases were
filed with the WTO. This has brought the number of
disputes taken to the WTO to 203 since its creation in
January 1995. It is testimony to the value of the WTO
that so many Members use the dispute settlement mechanism
to seek solutions to difficult problems.
Indeed,
in most cases, the disputes are resolved by negotiation
without recourse to the panel process. The dispute
settlement system has provided a forum for disagreements
about the implementation of the obligations contained in
the WTO Agreements. It has proved to be an effective,
efficient and essential aspect of the rules-based
international trading system where legal rights are more
important than economic size. Without an objective
dispute settlement system, disagreements between Member
governments would have no forum for resolution and could
drag on unresolved for an indeterminate period. This
system helps prevent unresolved economic disputes from
aggravating broader international relations between
Members.
On
25 May, the WTO Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) completed
new appointments to the Appellate Body by selecting Mr.
Y. Taniguchi of Japan who joins Mr. G. M. Abi-Saab of
Egypt and Mr. A. V. Ganesan of India who were appointed
by the DSB in April this year. The new Appellate Body
Members replaced Messrs. S. El-Naggar of Egypt and Mr.
Matsushita of Japan whose terms of office expired on 31
March, and Mr. C. Beeby of New Zealand who passed away on
19 March.
Cooperation
with other agencies back
to top
In
addition to the Integrated Framework initiative mentioned
above, there have been a number of advances in
cooperation between the WTO and other international
agencies so far this year. Of these, a notable example
was an information session held by the Committee on Trade
and Environment (CTE) in July with representatives from
the Secretariats of a number of multilateral
environmental agreements (MEAs). The aim of this session
was to help facilitate CTE Members' understanding of the
linkages between the multilateral environment and trade
agendas, and to build awareness of the use of
trade-related measure in MEAs. A two-day workshop was
also held in June on how to analyse risk for food safety
measures. Throughout the workshop, experts from Member
governments and observer organisations presented case
studies of actual risk assessments made by countries and
how these had, in the real world, resulted in specific
health-related measures aimed at ensuring food safety, or
the protection of animal or plant health.
The
WTO is also represented in the Administrative Committee
on Coordination, a body responsible for coordination and
coherence between the bodies of the United Nations, World
Bank, IMF and WTO. The Director-General was an active
participant in its first regular session of 2000 in Rome
on 6 and 7 April where he made a presentation on the
Integrated Framework for LDCs.
Collaboration
among the WTO, the World Bank and the IMF continues to
intensify under the “Coherence” mandate,
particularly as efforts are made to provide developing
country Members with better trade-related technical
assistance and capacity-building to support
implementation of their WTO obligations and help them
reap real, practical benefits from their trade reforms.
Collaboration in the period since 1 January has included
extensive Secretariat contacts with senior Bank and Fund
staff, members of their executive boards, development and
finance officials in capitals, and efforts at the
political level by the WTO Director-General, in capitals
and at Interim and Development Committee meetings.
One
important result of these efforts has been the decision
of the World Bank to “mainstream” trade issues
in its development priorities – and, in particular,
in its country-based Poverty Reduction Strategies which
are administered jointly with the IMF. The importance of
the World Bank's support in this area is difficult to
exaggerate – not only because of the significant
financing they can help mobilize, but also because of
their country-level involvement and policy expertise.
While the WTO will continue to take responsibility for
assisting developing-country Members to implement their
legal obligations, the World Bank will complement these
efforts through assistance for related human,
institutional and infrastructural capacity-building.
Initiatives
of the director-general back
to top
Task
forces
At the Director-General's initiative, nine
internal Secretariat task forces were set up in March to
consider matters of immediate concern relating both to
the internal functioning of the Secretariat and ways in
which the Secretariat could improve on its service to
Members, and better reach out to the public and other
organisations. The reports and recommendations that were
the outcome of this process are currently under
consideration by the Director-General.
Outreach
to non-resident Members
First-step initiatives to help ensure the fuller
participation of non-resident Members in the WTO have
been put in place. These include the appointment of a
member of the secretariat staff earlier this year to
liase with non-residents and the organisation of a
week-long seminar for non-residents in Geneva at the WTO.
This includes a programme of lectures and other events
designed to help trade officials familiarise themselves
with WTO Agreements and how the organisation works. A
“Geneva Week 2000” is currently being organised
for October, and it will be focused on implementation
issues and on the “built-in agenda”
negotiations in agriculture and services. In addition
over 76 Reference centres have been installed in
developing and least developed countries to keep
governments and regional entities up-to-date on the
activities of the WTO.
Members
and the Secretariat are continuing to explore ways of
building on these first steps. The key idea that has
emerged is that any initiative should be focused on the
specific needs of the intended beneficiaries, should be
non-duplicative of existing efforts in this area, and
should take on board the principle of ownership by the
countries in favour of which such initiatives are
targeted.
Participation
in international meetings and contacts in capitals back
to top
In
the first half of the year, the Director-General and his
Deputies have kept up a full programme of participation
in international meetings with the public and private
sectors and non-governmental organisations and contacts
with WTO member governments in their respective capitals.
These activities have been focussed on developing the
WTO's outreach to Members and to civil society and on
facilitating dialogue among Members on the future
direction of the trade agenda. The Director-General's
programme of activity outside Geneva so far this year has
included active participation in meetings of the other
international agencies including the United Nations,
OECD, UNCTAD, the IMF, World Bank and the United Nations
Administrative Committee on Coordination. The
Director-General also took part in regional meetings
including the APEC Ministerial Meeting, the 36th Summit
of Heads of State and Government of the OAU, the 5th
Summit of the COMESA Authority of the Heads of State and
Government and the South Africa Economic Summit.
The
Director-General's meetings both in Geneva and abroad
have also included contacts with parliamentarians,
representatives from transnational parliamentary groups,
and meetings with representatives from NGOs, including
industry and labour organisations.
Special
study back
to top
The
WTO Secretariat published a Special Study on Trade,
Income Disparity and Poverty in June 2000. This study
showed the positive role that trade can play in poverty
reduction. It can be downloaded here
from
the WTO website.
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