Lamy urges members to “step up” negotiations

Statement by Pascal Lamy

Since the beginning of the year, I have been pursuing my contacts with a wide range of Members, at various different levels and in various locations. My activities have included meetings with various groupings (African Group, ACPs, LDCs, Grulac, G-20), meetings with a larger number of Ambassadors here in Geneva and with a number of Ministers, including in the margins of the World Economic Forum in Davos some 10 days ago. I have also just now returned from a visit to Chile, Peru and Argentina.

From the conversations I have had during these activities, I have received three clear messages:

• one, that there is widespread commitment to making good on what was agreed at Hong Kong,

• two, that there is a shared intention to move ahead across the whole of the DDA, making progress on all issues, and

• three, that all interlocutors understand that they will all have to move from their current positions and are willing to do so by moving “in concert”.

Obviously, Agriculture (in particular market access and domestic support) and NAMA remain the flagships of the convoy, but no-one is in any doubt that our convoy is a large one. These two issues have an important role in leading the convoy to port, but we all know that the convoy must arrive together, this is the very essence of our common principle of the “Single Undertaking”. In the bodies under the TNC alone, we are working on 10 separate areas — beyond Agriculture (including cotton) and NAMA, including Services, where the Hong Kong Declaration opened the door for plurilateral negotiations which will be to a great extent demand driven. For the negotiations to achieve real progress over the next weeks, the request/offer negotiations must be intensified. And we also have Rules, TRIPS, Environment, Trade Facilitation, DSU, S&D and Implementation.

In the other areas of the DDA, which are under the General Council, we also have a long list of very important issues like small economies, e-commerce or commodities to name a few. Even a quick look at the Hong Kong Ministerial Declaration illustrates the size of the task ahead of us.

The Declaration includes a number of firm deadlines, together with instructions in other areas. To help us plan and focus our work, you will have received a paper setting out the various timelines for our work this year. The paper repeats the very detailed timelines in the Hong Kong Declaration on Agriculture, NAMA and Services, and fleshes out with greater precision the work ahead in the areas where the HK Declaration is more general. This paper is not intended as an item of discussion, or negotiation in its own right. It does not alter the balance achieved in the Hong Kong Declaration. It is simply a tool to assist you, as well as the Chairs of the negotiating groups, in keeping an overview of the progress that is needed to advance the negotiations as a whole, and in making sure that no issue slips behind.

Now a word on process. There can be no doubt that our process pre-Hong Kong served us well. It met with widespread satisfaction, as we heard from delegations many times during our preparatory process. We should therefore maintain and, of course, improve on it. A transparent inclusive process, based on a bottom-up approach is clearly in the interests of us all. Let me stress here what I believe is the essential outreach role played by the different groupings before and at Hong Kong which in my view needs to continue throughout 2006.

The work must also continue to be integrated in a coherent way, across both the subjects and the different levels of negotiation. This means we clearly need not only to intensify the work in the negotiating groups, but also at the level of capital-based officials and of Ministers.

I think we all recognize the value of this multi-layered process, and I am sure no-one has any doubt that the Geneva process remains the backbone of the negotiations. Whatever may take place outside of this process, at whatever level cannot be anything other than an input to the multilateral forum where the decisions are made.

For my part, as I said, I have already intensified my consultations with delegations here and capitals, including regular meetings with the coordinators of the regional groupings. I will continue to work in close cooperation with the Chairs of the negotiating groups and with the General Council Chairman, and together we will ensure that there is a high level of coordination across our work.

The Ministers have given me quite a long “to do” list: chairing this body, of course; intensifying my work on Implementation, which I will come back to in a minute; providing updates on the development assistance aspects of Cotton; and working on Aid for Trade. Just a word on this last task — I am now ready to establish the Aid for Trade Task Force — the composition of which I will announce at the General Council tomorrow — and to start consulting on appropriate mechanisms to increase financial resources for Aid for Trade. I intend to ensure that we make solid progress in this work, which I expect to continue through the year at different levels, so that the Aid for Trade programme becomes operational this year. I shall keep you informed of progress in all these areas.

However, this always remains a negotiation among participants. If you are to reach agreement on schedule, it is essential for you to intensify your contacts with other delegations and with your capitals, to move us towards the elements we will need to conclude this Round at the end of the year. In particular, it is now urgently necessary to move to negotiating elements of texts and to flesh out discussions on generally applicable provisions and formulae with bilateral consideration of concrete and specific trade effects. I strongly encourage participants to step up this work.

I will now make my first report on Implementation in my role as Director-General, as mandated in the Hong Kong Ministerial Declaration. Ministers have asked me to intensify my consultative process on all outstanding implementation issues under paragraph 12(b) of the Doha Ministerial Declaration, without prejudice to the positions of Members. I have also been asked to report to each regular meeting of the TNC and the General Council, and the Council is to review progress and take any appropriate action no later than 31 July 2006.

I have already started intensifying the consultative process, with the assistance of a number of the Chairpersons of concerned WTO bodies acting as my Friends and two of my Deputy Directors-General, Valentine Rugwabiza who will take up the TRIMs issues and Rufus Yerxa for the issues of GIs and TRIPS/CBD. I will be meeting with my friends this week and I intend them to ask them to resume informal consultations as early as next week. I will report on progress achieved at the next TNC meeting.

The report I made on these issues to the last TNC meeting in November 2005 showed that the situation had not evolved significantly since July, when the General Council renewed the mandate given to the Director-General in the July 2004 Decision. It was for this reason and with the aim of fulfilling the commitment on this issue they undertook at Doha, that Ministers instructed that we continue this process. They also reiterated their instructions to all relevant bodies to find appropriate solutions as a priority. As I have said before, we will need both flexibility and creativity in our approaches to these issues if we are to be able to respect our mandate. I count on the co-operation of all of you in this task.