GENEVA (Reuters) – Ministers from across the globe are convening for a conference at the World Trade Organization in Geneva for the first time in more than four years from June 12-15. It comes at a critical juncture for the body and for global trade.
The meeting, delayed twice by COVID-19, is a chance for the 27-year-old body to prove it can respond to what Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has described as a “polycrisis” of economic, health, environmental and security challenges.
Nobody expects a package of deals but Okonjo-Iweala has urged negotiators to work continually to get “at least one or two” concrete outcomes.
Here are the main topics:
PANDEMIC RESPONSE
Okonjo-Iweala has called COVID-19 vaccine inequity “unconscionable” and given top priority to a deal to facilitate the flow of vaccines more widely.
Even though demand for COVID-19 shots has tapered off, India, South Africa and some 100 other backers are seeking a potential waiver of intellectual property rights for vaccines and treatments.
However, WTO members remain divided over a draft deal for vaccines negotiated between the four main parties (India, South Africa, the European Union and the United States) that was forged to break an 18-month deadlock. Protest groups are urging members to reject it and China has lodged an objection.
FISHING
Separate negotiations are aimed at removing subsidies that contribute to overfishing, a step that environmentalists say is important to help fish stocks recover.
But talks have been going on for 20 years and attempts at a deal failed at the last ministerial meeting in Buenos Aires in 2017. WTO deputy head Xiangchen Zhang said the fisheries outcome would be a “critical test” of the WTO’s credibility.
Colombian chair Santiago Wills says a global deal is “within reach” but considerable differences remain, including over forced labour and the scale of exemptions for developing countries that could include the world’s top fishing nation China. The latest draft deal from November contained 26 pairs of square brackets indicating unresolved areas.
India has been one of the biggest critics.
FOOD SECURITY
WTO chief Okonjo-Iweala is holding private consultations with a group of key economies aiming for a response to the food crisis driven partly by export disruptions from major wheat exporters Ukraine and Russia.
One option is a so-called “ministerial declaration” on ending tariffs on humanitarian food deliveries as proposed by Singapore, but even this does not yet command consensus, delegates say.
A draft agreement on other aspects of agricultural policy may be submitted to ministers ahead of the conference, but sources say vast gaps remained on key areas, including the form and level of allowable subsidies.
E-COMMERCE MORATORIUM
A ban on import duties or so-called “electronic transmissions” worth hundreds of billions of dollars a year is up for renewal.
The moratorium has been in place since 1998 but South Africa and India have launched a separate proposal to lift it. They have opposed an extension in the past, citing lost customs revenues, but have not so far blocked it.
WTO REFORM
All WTO members say the organisation’s rule book needs updating, although they disagree on how to do so.
Most pressingly, its dispute appeals court has been paralysed for nearly two years since then-U.S. president Donald Trump blocked new adjudicator appointments, which has quelled the appetite to seek redress of trade disputes through the WTO.
Okonjo-Iweala hopes members can agree a roadmap for reforming the dispute settlement procedure at the meeting.
However, delegates say there is little common ground, with some wanting only small tweaks and others, such as the United States, seeking a broad overhaul of a system described by its top trade official Katherine Tai as “unwieldy and bureaucratic”.
ENVIRONMENT
Negotiations began in 2020 and are in a preliminary phase, but some experts think the environment has the potential to give the body a new vitality and purpose.
New Zealand submitted a fossil fuel phase-out proposal but most delegates see this as too ambitious. If a deal on cutting fishing subsidies is agreed, that could give environmental efforts some momentum.
(Reporting by Emma Farge and Philip Blenkinsop; Editing by Toby Chopra)
