Bridges Weekly Trade News Digest • Volume 6 • Number 8 • 5th March 2002
WTO Group On Rules Discusses Negotiating Agenda, Fisheries Subsidies
WTO Members at an informal meeting of the newly-established Negotiating Group on Rules on 28 February set a tentative schedule for their upcoming meetings in 2002. Disagreement, however, persisted over whether the issue of fisheries subsidies should be treated as a separate agenda item or be discussed under wider talks on subsidies.
The Group agreed to hold five meetings in 2002, currently scheduled for 11 March, 13-15 May, 8-10 July, 16-18 October and 25-27 November. Members agreed that the issue of Regional Trade Agreements would be handled as a separate agenda item on par with antidumping and subsidies/countervailing measures.
However, Members failed to agree on how to deal with fisheries subsidies that are mandated to be discussed "in the context of" negotiations aimed at clarifying and improving disciplines under the Agreements on Implementation of Article VI of the GATT 1994 [anti- dumping and countervailing duties] and on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures in the Doha Declaration (para. 28).
Iceland — supported by others including Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Peru, New Zealand, Malaysia and the US — said that fisheries subsidies should be negotiated under a separate agenda item given that they received specific mention in the Doha Declaration. For their part, Japan and South Korea — who had opposed references to fisheries subsidies during the Doha negotiations — advocated discussions in the context of general subsidies. As one trade source speculated, fisheries negotiations included under general subsidies might hold up consensus on fisheries subsidies as Members are likely to bring up other sectors in the debate. Another trade source pointed out that fisheries subsidies were the only subsidy issue that had been identified as a win- win-win scenario (i.e. with economic, environmental and developmental benefits) and should therefore be treated separately.
According to one environmental source, negotiations under a separate item might raise the status of the issue by making agreement on fisheries a negotiating objective in its own right, thereby forcing Members to produce results. The source also speculated that developing countries might be more likely to accept environmental arguments in a separate discussion on fisheries subsidies rather than during negotiations on subsidies in general.
The conservation group World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) welcomed Iceland’s initiative and the show of force from key ‘friends of fish’ during the meeting. WWF hopes that including fisheries subsidies as a distinct agenda item will broaden the scope and modalities of the discussion without separating it from the main negotiations on subsidies. In particular, it would enable a differentiation between subsidies with negative or positive impacts on conservation and sustainable development, and would allow existing norms and regulations (for example those developed at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization or the UN Conference on Trade and Development), to be taken into account. Also, general subsidies are likely to be discussed by subsidies experts, while discussions on fisheries subsidies, WWF argues, need to include additional experts in order to address environmental and sustainable development-related aspects. Reference to negotiations on fisheries subsidies are included in the Trade and Environment section (para. 31) of the Doha Declaration.
The Chair of the Rules Negotiating Group, New Zealand’s Ambassador Timothy John Groser, said he would conduct further consultations with Members on this issue.
"WTO Members set schedule to implement Doha round rules," WTO REPORTER, 1 March 2002; ICTSD Internal Files.