Chair upbeat about members’ approach to final WTO fish subsidies push

By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED JANUARY 16, 2024 | UPDATED JANUARY 16, 2024

The start of the final “fish month” before the Word Trade Organization’s Ministerial Conference in Abu Dhabi has been promising, Einar Gunnarsson, Iceland’s ambassador who chairs the WTO talks, said today (January 16, 2024).

“Overall, the positive tone and constructive spirit with which members engaged demonstrated their continued commitment to conclude the second wave of negotiations by [the Ministerial Conference],” he said. (His full statement is below, the WTO website news story is here.)

Gunnarsson was speaking to journalists after opening the four weeks of talks the previous day.

The aim is to have a clean, agreed text by February 9. This would be sent, via the February 14 General Council meeting to the February 26–29 Ministerial Conference.

No WTO fisheries subsidies text this year, negotiations chair concedes

See also:
Technical note on subsidies for fisheries,
Talks face tough week as India seeks to reopen 2022 deal,
Updates, timeline and links and all articles tagged “fisheries subsidies”

And this update of the pre-Ministerial Conference “fish month” and the differences that need to be bridged: “What’s left to resolve in WTO fisheries subsidies talks after deadline missed”

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By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED DECEMBER 8, 2023 | UPDATED DECEMBER 12, 2023

Reaching agreement on a World Trade Organization fisheries subsidies text will not be possible by the end of the year after all, Einar Gunnarsson, Iceland’s ambassador and the talks’ chair, conceded at the end of the eighth “fish week” of the year.

With only about six working weeks left and a long list of differences to resolve, WTO members look increasingly unlikely to meet their target for a final agreement at the next WTO Ministerial Conference in Abu Dhabi in February.

Gunnarsson will not be able to submit a text for the year’s final meetings of the Trade Negotiations Committee and General Council next week.

We’re going to deliver this
— WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala

The WTO then closes down for Christmas and the New Year, leaving only January and the beginning of February to settle the many outstanding issues before the Abu Dhabi Ministerial Conference. Ministerial Conferences are not normally able to settle more than a handful of deadlocked topics.

See this update on the schedule and the “fish month”,
and details of the differences that need sorting out

Speaking to ambassadors in the week’s wrap-up session on December 8, 2023, Gunnarsson and WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala were still optimistic that the deal can be struck in time.

WTO fish talks complete draft read-through with little real negotiation

See also:
Technical note on subsidies for fisheries,
“Talks face tough week as India seeks to reopen 2022 deal”
“Updates, timeline and links” since Dec 2020,
all articles tagged “fisheries subsidies”

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By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED OCTOBER 16, 2023 | UPDATED OCTOBER 16, 2023

World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiators completed their read-through of the chair’s draft on subsidies contributing to overfishing and overcapacity in the week ending October 13, 2023, but hard bargaining to resolve some wide differences still lies ahead.

WTO members completed their line-by-line reading of the 5-page, 4-article draft circulated by the talks’ chair, Iceland’s ambassador Einar Gunnarsson in early September.

The many proposals for amending the draft are being compiled into “comprehensive tables of attributed suggestions for all the provisions in that document” so that they can be compared, he told negotiators.

“In short, it is now the right time to enter into full negotiating mode,” Gunnarsson urged them, indicating that proper negotiations have not yet begun.

WTO fish talks face tough week as India seeks to reopen 2022 deal

See also this technical note on subsidies for fisheries
and the end-of-week story “WTO fish talks complete draft read-through with little real negotiation”

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By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED OCTOBER 6, 2023 | UPDATED OCTOBER 16, 2023

World Trade Organization negotiations on fisheries subsidies resume for another week on Monday (October 9, 2023), with delegates starting to negotiate the chair’s draft, line by line, amid signs that the going will be tough.

A paper from India circulated at the start of the previous “fish week” (September 18–22) is said to have caused dismay among some negotiators apparently because it sought to reopen provisions that had already been agreed at the June 2022 WTO Ministerial Conference.

The paper also reiterates India’s position in the main issue that is now being negotiated, and one that has been deadlocked for years — subsidies that contribute to overfishing and overcapacity. It differs considerably from the draft that the chair circulated a month ago on this subject, indicating how much work negotiators face.

Chair’s draft accepted, haggling over WTO fisheries subsidies text begins

By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED SEPTEMBER 22, 2023 | UPDATED SEPTEMBER 23, 2023

World Trade Organization (WTO) members have agreed to proceed with the text drafted by the fisheries subsidies talks’ chair as a basis for their negotiations as they strive to reach agreement on it by February 2024.

This final phase of the negotiations aims to break the deadlock that left the 2022 Fisheries Subsidies Agreement incomplete. WTO members still have to agree on provisions to discipline — and in some cases outlaw — subsidies that contribute to overcapacity and overfishing.

Their target for reaching agreement is the next (13th) WTO Ministerial Conference (MC13) in Abu Dhabi next February.

Whether a breakthrough can be achieved after decades of deadlock remains to be seen. Disciplining subsidies contributing to overcapacity and overfishing is a key part of the UN Sustainable Development Goal 14, target 6, whose 2020 deadline for the WTO talks is fading into the distant past.

Is it time for WTO members to rethink how ratifications work?

Not one, but two: go to the Legal Texts page on the WTO website and we find this

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By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED AUGUST 3, 2023 | UPDATED MARCH 3, 2024

The agreements of the World Trade Organization are not always what they seem. For example, even those who know the multilateral trading system quite well might be surprised to learn that there are not one, but two versions of the WTO’s intellectual property agreement.

Go to the Legal Texts page on the WTO website and we find this:

Annex 1C  Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) (unamended version)

TRIPS Agreement (as amended on 23 January 2017)

If we follow the links we can see the difference. It’s about improving access to medicines — suspending some rules so poor countries’ can import patented medicines more easily.

What we can’t see is also important. We can’t see which countries apply which version of the agreement (called “TRIPS” for trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights).

Take two neighbours, Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, with similar population sizes and similar gross domestic product.

WTO members are slow to ratify the Fisheries Subsidies Agreement

IN A NUTSHELL
Ratifications of the June 2022 Fisheries Subsidies Agreement
May 13, 2024

Total ratifications = 75
(= 46% of all members, = 68% of the first target)
First target (two thirds of 164 members) = 110
Additional ratifications needed to reach two thirds = 35

Members that have not ratified = 88
Eventual target (agreement applies to all members) = 164 members (or 163 ratifications*)

● The agreement takes effect after two thirds of the membership have ratified (“accepted”) it. Even then it only applies to the countries that have ratified
● The WTO’s up-to-date list of ratifications is here

* So long as the EU’s ratifications count as 27 (the number of EU member states) instead of 28 (member states + EU itself, also a WTO member), total ratifications cannot exceed 163

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By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED JUNE 7, 2023 | UPDATED MAY 14, 2024

June 17, 2023 is already buried in the distant the past. That was the first anniversary of WTO members agreeing by consensus to curb fisheries subsidies. It was also the original target for enough countries to ratify it so that deal could take effect.

That target was then moved to the February 26–29, 2024 Ministerial Conference in Abu Dhabi. When that was going to be missed by a substantial shortfall, the deadline was quietly dropped.

Instead the Ministerial Conference was turned into a celebration of the ratifications that had been submitted, including nine at the conference. That brought the total to 70, still 40 short of the 110 needed to activate the agreement in ratifying countries.

It may take many more months, if not a year or two, to reach 110 — two thirds of the membership. Even then 53 countries will still have not ratified the agreement, meaning it will not apply to them. (Ignoring the likelihood that by then the WTO is likely to have at least two more members.)

COUNTRIES THAT STILL HAVE NOT RATIFIED THE 2022 AGREEMENT
MAY 13, 2024

Afghanistan, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Armenia, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Benin, Bolivia, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Colombia, Congo, Costa Rica, Democratic Republic Congo, Djibouti, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Eswatini, Georgia, Ghana, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Honduras, India*, Indonesia*, Israel, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Kyrgyz Republic, Lesotho, Liberia, Liechtenstein, Madagascar, Malawi, Maldives, Mali, Mauritania, Mexico*, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco*, Mozambique, Myanmar*, Namibia, Nepal, Nicaragua, Niger, North Macedonia, Oman*, Pakistan, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Qatar, Saint Kitts and Nevis, St Vincent & the Grenadines, Samoa, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Thailand*, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Uganda, Vanuatu, Venezuela, Vietnam*, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe (88)

* In the top 20 fishing nations by catch size (FAO data)