By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED JULY 16, 2021 | UPDATED OCTOBER 10, 2021
Update: As the talks resumed after the summer break and headed for the year-end Ministerial Conference, there was little sign of any compromise on the outstanding issues.
India circulated a new proposal (not public) calling for a 25-year exemption from overfishing subsidy prohibitions for developing countries not engaged in distant water fishing. A number of delegations complained in a session on September 24 that this and other ideas in the proposal “had no element that could help bring about a compromise between members” (Amiti Sen in Hindu Business Line, September 26, 2021).
See more updates, as negotiators go through the chair’s draft line by line almost daily in October 2021.
The two people managing the negotiations on fisheries subsidies in the World Trade Organization (WTO) said they were more confident that an agreement can be reached after 104 ministers or their representatives participated in an online meeting on July 15, 2021.
“This is the closest we have ever come towards reaching an outcome — a high-quality outcome that would contribute to building a sustainable blue economy,” WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala told the ministers at the end of the meeting.
“The prospect for a deal in the autumn ahead of our Ministerial Conference has clearly improved,” she said.
The next Ministerial Conference — the WTO’s top decision-making body — meets from November 30 to December 3 this year
Ambassador Santiago Wills of Colombia, who chairs the negotiations, echoed Okonjo-Iweala. He told a press conference afterwards that he was also more optimistic that an agreement can be reached in time.
But some of the statements that have been made public, with some reading between the lines, show that major differences still remain.
Continue reading “Optimism after WTO ministers meet on fisheries subsidies, despite splits”
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