Bridges Weekly Trade News Digest • Volume 6 • Number 7 • 26th February 2002
Upcoming Services Talks To Address Range Of Issues
Convening for this year’s first 2-week services block, Members will meet in the Council for Trade in Services (CTS) subsidiary bodies such as the Working Party on GATS Rules (WPGR) and the Working Party for Domestic Regulation (WPDR) during the first week starting 11 March, followed by regular and special sessions of the CTS from 18-22 March. Within the services negotiation process, Members are expected to deal principally with the organisation of future work and the discussion of submitted proposals on both sectoral and horizontal issues. Furthermore, Members are discussing the prospect of extending the 15 March deadline for determining whether or not an emergency safeguard (EMS) should be established.
GATS negotiations
According to the tentative agenda of the 19-22 March special session of the CTS, Members will analyse both previously-tabled and new proposals on assessment and treatment of autonomous liberalisation. In this context, the EC prepared a 22 February proposal (S/CSS/W/133, searchable at http://docsonline.wto.org/gen_search.asp) on how to give "credits" to states that have unilaterally liberalised their services markets beyond the commitments undertaken during the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations. According to the new proposal, a Member seeking to agree on the appropriate credit should inter alia be able to show: (i) the liberalising nature of the specific measure concerned; (ii) the WTO conformity of the measure; (iii) the contribution of the measure to the objectives of the GATS negotiations; (iv) the relevance of the measure to the Member from whom credit is sought; and (v) the binding nature of the liberalisation.
Continuing the services negotiations under GATS Article XIX, Members will address proposals on financial and transport services sectors, followed by discussions on horizontal issues such as increased participation of developing countries (Article IV), exemptions from the most-favoured nation (MFN) principle (Article II), and mode four (movement of natural persons). During the last two days of the second week, Members will deal with those remaining services sectors for which proposals have been submitted. As indicated by sources, Members will then be given the possibility to "conduct some sort of stocktaking" regarding the negotiations undertaken so far before presenting their views on how the future work should be structured and designed.
Subsidiary bodies
Ahead of the formal meetings from 11-13 March, the Members are meeting this week in the WPDR and the Committee on Specific Commitments (CSC) in an informal mode in order to address issues relating to the organisation of future work of the bodies. Notably, on 1 March Members will hold an informal meeting of the WPGR, with exclusive focus on the question of extending the mid-March deadline for the establishment of an ESM. Sources said that it was clear now that Members would "definitively" miss the 15 March date and would therefore informally discuss the issue whether or not, and if so, until what date the deadline should be shifted. Three main camps have emerged in this area: the first one is advocating a short — perhaps 1-year — period; the second bloc calls for an extension until the end of the negotiations (scheduled for 1 January 2005), while the third seeks a middle ground by proposing to set the deadline at the Fifth WTO Ministerial Conference, to be held in the second half of 2003 in Mexico. Sources cautioned that Members needed to agree on a prolongation of the deadline in order to maintain their mandate to negotiate on the question of creating an ESM.
Other activities
On 14-15 March, the WTO Secretariat is organising a Symposium on Assessment of Trade in Services that will include recent statistical developments in global services trade presented by the WTO, empirical evidence on services reform, structural change and economic development provided by the World Bank, and an overview of sectoral studies presented by the UN Conference of Trade and Development (UNCTAD). Although termed a ’symposium’, the participants of this event are limited to government delegates. The Geneva-based non-governmental group CIEL (Centre for International Environmental Law), which had requested in an open letter that the meeting be open to civil society organisations, is planning to hold a meeting on assessment prior to the WTO event.
Furthermore, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), in cooperation with the World Bank, is organising a services experts meeting on 4-5 March addressing the issue of domestic regulation (GATS Article VI). Sources familiar with services negotiation dynamics speculate that the participants — OECD members plus several selected developing countries — are trying to move the issue forward as talks at the respective WTO forum, the WPDR, have lost momentum.
ICTSD will report on the WTO services weeks and other services-related events in forthcoming issues of BRIDGES Weekly.
"Services: EU Proposal Would Grant Trade Credits For Unilaterally Opening Services Market," WTO REPORTER, 26 February 2002. ICTSD Internal Files.