On the last day of this round of negotiations, the co-convenors shared their thoughts on future timelines, which aim for the conclusion of the negotiations by the European summer.

Ambassador James Baxter of Australia said: “I think it's safe to say that as a group, we achieved our objective for the week of resolving all the technical issues required to move this negotiation to the final decision-making phase. And I really want to thank you and all of your teams working with us, including through late nights and early mornings, to get us to this point.”

In his introductory remarks, Ambassador Hung Seng Tan of Singapore reminded participating members of the systemic and commercial value of the negotiations. He said: “Members have participated actively, contributed constructively, and developed successfully a substantive and credible package of digital trade rules which we have stabilised in our Chairs’ Text.”

He added: “This would be the first ever set of baseline digital trade rules, and it would contribute to the growing e-commerce in our countries by providing greater legal predictability and certainty against the backdrop of increasing regulatory fragmentation. While we have made much headway, we have not crossed the finishing line.”

Ambassador Atsuyuki Oike of Japan laid out future milestones, highlighting that the co-convenors will circulate the final version of the Chairs' text to members next week so that they can finalize their domestic consultations and make the necessary political push to take the negotiations across the finishing line.

In May, the co-convenors will hold a Heads of Delegation meeting to confirm the finalization of outstanding issues, with the aim of concluding the negotiations by the end of May. The co-convenors said that in July, they will be taking the necessary steps to incorporate the outcome into the WTO framework. A “legal scrub” of the agreement will continue simultaneously with this process.

In their last technical discussion of the Chairs' text, members focused on articles relating to final provisions, scope and horizontal carve outs, customs duties and the provisions on cryptography, development and e-payments. It was decided that the article on information and communications technology (ICT) products that use cryptography will not be part of the Chairs' text going forward. Work will continue in the coming weeks to address some of the outstanding issues.