What the fisheries subsidies talks’ chair reported to WTO ambassadors

SEE ALSO
Updates on the fisheries subsidies talks. And all stories tagged “fisheries subsidies”

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

Iceland’s ambassador Einar Gunnarsson, who chairs the World Trade Organization’s fisheries subsidies negotiations is expected to circulate on Monday (February 19, 2024) a new draft on curbing subsidies that contribute to overcapacity and overfishing.

The draft will be the final version for the February 26–29 Ministerial Conference in Abu Dhabi (“MC13”). At the previous conference in Geneva, June 2022, WTO ministers set the Abu Dhabi conference as the deadline for concluding the negotiations.

The draft is nicknamed “Fish 2” because it covers provisions that could not be agreed and were therefore dropped from the 2022 Fisheries Subsidies Agreement (“Fish 1”).

The new draft will draw on a “Fish Month” of negotiations that began in mid-January. This is Gunnarsson’s report to WTO ambassadors on the talks and on his intentions for the final draft, delivered on February 14, at the final General Council meeting before the Ministerial Conference.

Comment: on India’s claim that a plurilateral WTO deal is ‘illegal’

SEE ALSO
In General Council India alone opposes investment deal as a WTO agreement
Technical note: types of plurilateral deals and adding them to WTO rules
What the agreement includes
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General Council minutes from this meeting and in general (published a few months after the meeting)
All articles tagged “investment facilitation”
All articles tagged “Plurilaterals”

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By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED JANUARY 12, 2024 | UPDATED MAY 10, 2024

India has circulated a strongly-worded statement prepared for the World Trade Organization’s General Council on December 15, 2023 on why it opposes bringing the new plurilateral agreement on Investment Facilitation for Development (IFD) into the package of WTO rules.

It describes the whole process as “illegal”, without any mandate and against the multilateral WTO framework. Worse, India says, the investment facilitation talks defy a “negative mandate” because of previous consensus decisions against the move.

Why is this important? Two words: WTO reform.

But is that legalistic rejection valid? Some lawyers suggest the argument is political even though it is dressed up as legal.

And “BS” is how one described the claim that negotiations can only be launched in the WTO by a consensus mandate.

Six talking points from the year’s final General Council meeting

By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED DECEMBER 21, 2023 | UPDATED JANUARY 24, 2024

The World Trade Organization’s General Council had 25 items on the agenda for its last meeting of 2023, several of them with multiple sub-items. Most are — frankly — boring although essential for the record of WTO operations.

But some points were worth discussing from the meeting, which we can extend to include year-end sessions of the Trade Negotiations Committee and Dispute Settlement Body.

Here are six. They won’t hit the headlines, except perhaps one, but they do tell us something about the state of play on bigger issues, and where the WTO might be heading, particularly with the February 26–29 Abu Dhabi Ministerial Conference now only two months away.

WTO senior officials face struggle to avoid distractions ‘elsewhere’

UPDATE October 30, 2023—The G7 trade ministers’ statement issued in Japan on October 2023 covers a lot of these issues.


UPDATE October 25, 2023—As we thought, little has emerged on the substance, particularly whether the officials narrowed any gaps on substance, or showed they were receptive to others’ concerns and therefore prepared to move from existing positions.

The chairs’ summary (with oral reports from break-out sessions) and the WTO website news story are optimistic — more than some might be — but mainly based on the process and the tone, at least as far as we can tell from their descriptions.

For example, they were encouraged by the agreement to bring forward the target for concluding a fisheries subsidies text to the end of this year. But what does it really signify? Does it show the chances of a deal have improved? Or is it simply practical — that a text is needed by about that time if a deal is to be concluded by the February Ministerial Conference. There was no report of any movement in the widely differing positions on the text.

The rest of their summary seems similar, and includes some floated views that will not work.

Whether that translates into genuine progress in the final months of the year remains to be seen. Which is more-or-less what we suggested.

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By Peter Ungphakorn and Robert Wolfe
POSTED OCTOBER 19, 2023 | UPDATED NOVEMBER 1, 2023

In the middle of last month, a well-known journalist specialising in trade made “one of my infrequent trips” to the World Trade Organization in Geneva. He found that “the big trade news” during the WTO’s high profile annual public forum was “unilateral action that took place elsewhere”.

That just about sums up the situation facing senior officials of WTO member governments as they head for one of their own infrequent trips to the WTO’s Geneva offices.

On Monday and Tuesday (October 23–24, 2023), officials from capitals have been summoned to Geneva to try to drag themselves, their counterparts and their Geneva delegations further along the road towards meaningful results when their ministers gather in Abu Dhabi early next year (February 26–29, 2024).

Can a WTO member be expelled? No. But …

By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED MARCH 23, 2022 | UPDATED MARCH 26, 2022

Can a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) be expelled? The short answer is no. There is no legal means of doing that.

The question arises because of a number of calls to expel Russia, to suspend its membership or to suspend its ability to act in the WTO, in response to its invasion of Ukraine.

Those three are not exactly the same. The first two — expulsion or suspending membership — are clearly legal issues. They require decisions by the WTO’s membership.

The response from almost all experts in WTO trade law is simple: there are no provisions in the WTO agreements that would allow expulsion or suspension.

Ukraine invasion—what Russia and Belarus face in the WTO system: so far

This blog post contains a list of actions that countries have taken against Russia and Belarus. It will now only be updated occasionally. The point was to examine how they work, where WTO decisions might be needed and the implications, and how they relate to WTO provisions such as non-discrimination (MFN) or the security exceptions. That should be clearer now.

See these sources for closer monitoring:

Global Trade Alert

A considerably longer list of sanctions announced against Russia is available at Global Trade Alert. Many are outside the WTO system. Some may be within the system, such as export restrictions on dual-use products and restrictions on shipping services (but not air traffic rights). Russia’s retaliation is here.

Global Trade Alert was originally set up by Simon Evenett and his team at St Gallen University, Switzerland. It is now run by an independent foundation.

PIIE

Chad Bown of the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) has created a timeline that tracks all the actions taken by various countries on all sides: Russia’s war on Ukraine: A sanctions timeline.

A number of other sources are available. This one (details paywalled) is Europe-centred.

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By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED MARCH 4, 2022 | UPDATED MAY 10, 2022 (SEE ALSO ENTRY DATES)

This is a summary of actions taken or proposed so far against Russia within the WTO system. Some are also against Belarus, which is not a WTO member.

They are deliberately described as “within the WTO system” and not “in the WTO” — or worse “by the WTO” — to avoid confusion.

No agreement on India’s call for WTO ministers to discuss COVID-19 waiver

By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED JANUARY 10, 2022 | UPDATED JANUARY 11, 2022

India’s call for an online WTO ministerial meeting to  discuss the proposed intellectual property waiver for COVID-19 fell well short of consensus at an informal General Council meeting today (January 10, 2022).

Many delegations countering that members would have to be much closer to agreement on the proposed waiver before a meeting of ministers would be able to contribute to a solution, said sources familiar with today’s discussion of just over two hours.

WTO COVID-19 waiver: does the new draft move the talks forward?

UPDATE
‘Quad’ raise hopes of a COVID-19 deal and revival for the beleaguered WTO
March 2022. This leads to the compromise decision, June 17, 2022, at the WTO Ministerial Conference in Geneva

THE DISCUSSIONS IN THE WTO
An overview of the discussion to February 2022 is in 8 reasons why countries disagree over a WTO intellectual property waiver
An earlier summary of how members responded to this text is in a box at the end, along with an example of the chairman’s report to the General Council.

By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED MAY 25, 2021 | UPDATED JUNE 20, 2022

The long-awaited revised proposal related to the COVID-19 pandemic, to waive obligations on intellectual property protection, was finally circulated to members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) on May 25, 2021.

This will allow the first negotiations to proceed in the WTO’s intellectual property council since the US swung behind the idea of a waiver, if not necessarily in the form proposed. (The council’s official name is the TRIPS Council — for “trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights”.)

A closer examination of the contents shows that a lot may still have to be negotiated. In other words, this is not just about accepting or rejecting the waiver — to waive or not to waive. What is in the text and what is left out are all significant. We can expect some rough times ahead.

Dire WTO General Council meeting shows scale of Okonjo-Iweala’s task

By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED MARCH 5, 2021 | UPDATED JULY 25, 2021

‘It cannot be business as usual,” she had said when she was appointed. “It cannot be business as usual,” the ambassadors had echoed as they congratulated her. And at the next opportunity they did their utmost to demonstrate the exact opposite.

If Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala needed evidence of how much had to change at the World Trade Organization (WTO), her first few days as director-general offered her plenty to think about. Some who attended the WTO General Council’s first regular meeting of the year said it was one of the worst they could remember.

US lifts objections that deadlocked the WTO over its next director-general

By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED OCTOBER 28, 2020 | UPDATED FEBRUARY 15, 2021

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On February 15, 2021, Nigerian Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala was confirmed as the World Trade Organization’s next director-general. The decision was by a consensus of the WTO’s membership. See Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is the new WTO chief, but let’s not get carried away.

This was made possible 10 days earlier when the new Biden administration in the US announced its “strong support” for her, ending three months of deadlock.

By then, South Korean candidate Yoo Myung-hee withdrew her candidacy. By overturning the stance of the Trump administration and its US Trade Representative, Robert LIghthizer, Biden paved the way for Okonjo-Iweala to be selected by the necessary consensus.

What follows was written before the deadlock was broken.