WTO Discussions Narrow in on Transparency and Civil Society Relations

from BRIDGES Monthly Vol. 2 No. 5

Discussions in and around the WTO in the next few months are likely to focus increasingly on issues relating to transparency of the international trade body, as well as its interaction with civil society. At the WTO General Council Meeting on 15-16 July, Director-General Renato Ruggiero made a significant statement reagrding the WTO's relations with NGOs. Ruggiero's statement included a number of proposals for improving relations with civil society. These responded to the importance recognised in the Ministerial Declaration of enhancing public understanding of the benefits of the multilateral trading system (see below), as well as to the sometimes violent protests against the international trading system that took place in Geneva during the week of the Ministerial Meeting.

Ruggiero's proposals include holding regular briefings for NGOs and setting up an 'NGO forum' on the WTO website. In addition, the Secretariat will compile a monthly list of documents received from NGOs, which will be circulated to all Member governments. Underlying the current discussions on transparency and civil society relations is the May 1998 Ministerial Declaration, in which WTO Members recognised 'the importance of enhancing public understanding of the benefits of the multilateral trading system in order to build support for it'. In the Declaration, Members also said they would 'consider how to improve the transparency of WTO operations [and] continue to improve [their] efforts towards the objectives of sustained economic growth and sustainable development'.

While WTO Members have no formal mandate or deadline for addressing the broader issue of the institution's relations with civil society, two processes involving transparency considerations are currently underway: the reviews of the Dispute Settlement Understanding and the 1996 decision on document derestriction.

Document deristriction, dispute settlement, civil society relations

The WTO General Council in July started consideration of these issues. Two kinds of documents - not counting dispute settlement documents - were mentioned in the context of derestriction: minutes of meetings and WTO working documents. The United States and the European Union both tabled proposals for speedier and more widespread document derestriction, calling for meeting agendas and minutes, submissions by Members and Secretariat background notes to be circulated as unrestricted.1 Some Members were reticent about proposals to derestrict minutes of meetings as these could contain indications of current or future negotiating positions. There is also the fear that full document transparency could expose negotiators to contradictory (and potentially paralysing) pressures from domestic groups, preventing them from articulating coherent negotiation strategies in WTO processes, or making negotiating positions quite inflexible once announced. The WTO Secretariat is in the process of preparing a background paper to provide Members with an overview of the rules and practices that currently apply to different categories of WTO documents. It is unclear as yet to what extent transparency and participation issues relating to dispute settlement will be discussed in the

General Council or in the context of the review of the Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU), scheduled by the WTO built-in agenda to take place by the end of 1998. The principal issues include openness of dispute settlement panels to input through friends-of-the-court (amicus curiae) briefs, and the date of publication of panel reports. At the General Council meeting, the EU outlined possibilities for enhanced interaction between 'interested stakeholders' and WTO Members, and noted that it would present 'a number of proposals to improve transparency' in the context of the DSU review. The US had earlier called for opening the dispute settlement proceedings to the public, but did not include the topic in its paper to the General Council. While it remains unlikely that panels will be opened to the public, the issue of availability of reports is real, and goes beyond transparency. The current situation gives parties to a dispute, who know the panel's decision before the others, an advantage over other WTO Members. In the words of Canada's WTO Ambassador John Weekes, Chair of the General Council, 'derestriction of panel reports is not just about access to documents. It is also about equality amongst WTO Members.'

The way ahead

No decisions were made on transparency or WTO/civil society relations during the July General Council where most WTO Members limited themselves to stating their general positions on the principle of transparency. In addition, the meeting was too short for Members to put forward detailed positions on any specific points.While many countries voiced scepticism about bringing NGOs further into the WTOs operations, it is nevertheless worth noting that Ruggiero's proposals for civil society relations were not criticised, and were considered to be within the scope of what the Secretariat is allowed to do. On the other issues, the process of negotiation is still incipient and positions will probably only start being narrowed down when WTO meetings begin again in the autumn. For instance, it is not clear at this stage whether the three elements will be subject to separate conclusions or if the WTO will search consensus by integrating them into a package for negotiations. Although the exact schedule of forthcoming meetings in which transparency and civil society relations are likely to be raised is not yet known, one can expect them to be discussed

. An informal General Council meeting will precede the Special Session on 18 September. Both the informal session and the Special Session are expected to finish leftover work such as the appointment of a new Director General, deciding on the WTO senior management structure and the issue of electronic commerce, before moving on to issues such as the Third Ministerial Meeting and transparency in the WTO. Around the time of the General Council special session, senior Cairns group representatives from capitals are expected to be present in Geneva, where they may raise the issue of WTO transparency. Given its geographical composition and relative weight in world trade, a consensus amongst this group could be important (the Cairns group comprises most of the world's principal agricultural producers). WTO Members are also likely to discuss the issue of transparency as it relates to document availability, dispute-settlement and WTO-NGO relations outside formal sessions of the General Council, although the format, timing, location and formality of these meetings are as yet undefined. No dates have yet been fixed for the Dispute Settlement Review, but substantive discussions on issues submitted by member governments are likely to start towards the end of September or early October (for more information on the review, see Bridges Vol.2 No.4, page 7).

NOTES 1 On 7 July 1998, 98 non-governmental organisations sent WTO representatives the Civil Society Statement on Openness, Transparency and Access to Documents in the WTO. The Statement focuses on document dissemination and NGO inputs to the WTO's dispute settlement proceedings. It is available from ICTSD, as well as the ICTSD Web site http://www.ictsd.org.