Bridges Weekly Trade News Digest • Volume 6 • Number 31 • 25th September 2002
Meeting On Special And Differential Treatment Agrees On How To Proceed
Delegates convened on 23 September for an informal meeting of the WTO Committee on Trade and Development (CTD) to deal with the procedural matter of how to move forward with the work programme on special and differential treatment (S&D) agreed upon by Members in a report (TN/CTD/3) issued in late July (see BRIDGES Weekly, 8 August 2002). The process that was eventually agreed upon held very closely to a draft plan circulated to delegates on 20 September by Ambassador Ransford Smith (Jamaica) — the Chair of the CTD special session (the body tasked to handle the S&D mandate). As well, two recent papers dealing with procedural matters, submitted by Switzerland and Paraguay respectively, were briefly discussed at the meeting (see TN/CTD/W/14 & TN/CTD/W/15, searchable at http://docsonline.wto.org).
Leading up to July
The report agreed upon on 26 July took months of wrangling and numerous formal and informal meetings to hammer out (see BRIDGES Weekly, 8 August 2002, link above). Paragraph 12.1 of the Ministerial Decision on Implementation-related Issues (WT/MIN(01)/W/10) outlined a number of tasks related to making S&D more effective and operational (including making certain provisions, where appropriate, mandatory). Members spent five months debating different interpretations of the Decision (i.e. the mandate) as well as different visions of the future of S&D. By the end of July, when a "report with clear recommendations for a decision" was due, they were able only to agree on one out of nearly 90 proposals submitted and were forced to extend the deadline from 31 July to 31 December 2002. The ‘agreement’ reflected in the report, however, left many questions unanswered, of which the most fundamental was which of the two tracks of proposals submitted (agreement-specific or cross- cutting/institutional) would take priority.
Finding a way to December
In addition to agreeing on the work programme (as offered by the Chair) leading up to 31 December, Members also accepted the need for "flexibility", taking into account needs and developments as appropriate. Currently, three formal and two informal meetings are envisaged — with the key question surrounding which ‘track’ of proposals would take priority at each of the different meetings. The five meetings are currently scheduled for 7 & 23 October, 13 & 25 November, and 2 or 3 December (see ‘ How to organise the workload’ below).
Comments on the work programme
While Members did agree to the work programme as presented a number of concerns were raised during the informal meeting. Developing country delegates were reported to have been especially averse to the fact that four of the five meetings were scheduled to take place from 6pm to 9pm. In comments, one developing country delegate cited that after being in meetings all day, he would not be in the state of mind to confront an issue as complex as S&D. Chair Smith responded by saying that an effort would be made to find alternative time slots. Additionally, a number of delegates were reportedly opposed to the high concentration of key items in the two short informal sessions, as well as the fact that they do not actually occur back-to-back with the expert bodies (as mandated in the 26 July report). With regards to the clustering of the agreement-specific issues, a number of Members (including Canada and India) noted the complexity of the groupings, while the Africa Group said that they would need to look at the clustering structure critically to assess whether it met their expectations.
How to organise the workload
According to sources, the 7 October (full-day) formal meeting is set to put a cluster of agreement-specific proposals first on the agenda (dealing generally with market access and some policy space issues). This is scheduled to be followed by discussions around a Monitoring Mechanism, which is the only proposal of the nearly 90 that received outright supported in the 26 July report. After these two items, Members will address the core cross-cutting issues of principles & objectives; the debate over a single- or multi-tiered structure of rights & obligations; issues related to graduation; trade preferences & related issues, including the Enabling Clause; and utilisation.
The second formal meeting, a three-hour session scheduled for 25 November, is to begin with the cross-cutting issues of coherence, benchmarks, technical assistance & capacity building, and transition periods. This is to be followed by a second cluster of agreement- specific proposals, relating to transition periods, technical assistance, items concerning the least developed countries (LDCs) not covered elsewhere, and approximately 10 others that don’t fit into the other groupings. Looking at how S&D can be incorporated into the architecture of WTO rules is to be the final items dealt with at this short session.
Between these two formal sessions, two informal sessions will be held, which attempt to place CTD special session meetings near those of relevant technical bodies. The two three-hour sessions, scheduled for 23 October and 13 November respectively, aspire to tackle proposals relating to technical and health standards, anti-dumping, services, safeguards, subsidies & countervailing duties, dispute settlement and agriculture.
A final formal meeting is scheduled for either 2 or 3 December to consider the report that is to be presented to the General Council (which is scheduled to meet on 10 & 11 December).
Two new submissions
The new submissions from Switzerland and Paraguay saw minimal discussion outside of their being briefly presented by the respective Members. However, one developed country delegate in attendance noted the support by the larger trading powers (the US, EC, Canada, Japan, Australia) on the Swiss provision that advocated taking 35 of the proposals out of the hands (and timeline) of the CTD special sessions and put in those of the relevant negotiating groups. Speaking on the Swiss presentation, one developing country delegate said it "simply will not fly". Similar sentiments were expressed on the proposal from Paraguay. Both proposals are to be discussed in more detail at the 7 October meeting.
Finding the proposals
For those wishing to review the various submissions and reports submitted to the WTO in the Special Sessions of the Committee on Trade and Development, virtually all are available from http://docsonline.wto.org, under the TN/CTD heading.
ICTSD reporting.