It took several Members by surprise that the meetings of the CTS were held and "business as usual" prevailed even after the collapse of negotiation in Cancun. Dramatising the situation, one developing country trade diplomat even stated that "after a nuclear war one thing survives: cockroaches, now its the GATS". However, how the CTS actually will proceeds remains to be decided. According to trade sources, Members felt that they should follow the pace of the other committees. Yet there was no consensus or certainty on the issue. Due to the nature of the request-offer mode of the services negotiations, the CTS could theoretically move ahead. However, Members need to take into account the Doha round negotiations, which are understood to be a single undertaking.

A special (negotiating) session of the CTS was held on 6 October. During the meeting, a proposal on mode 4 (movement of natural persons) prepared by India (TN/S/W/14, available at http://docsonline.wto.org/gen_search.asp) and thirteen other developing countries, including Argentina, China and South Africa submitted in May was discussed. The paper was also the subject discussions in the Working Party on Domestic Regulation a week earlier. According to the group of developing countries, the commitments of Members in mode 4 are primarily horizontal and bound for only a small subset of personnel. The paper proposed four categories of individuals under mode 4, however "the objective [of the paper] is not to achieve perfect harmonisation of categories in the domestic regimes of all Members, but use of certain common categories of interest to all Members".

Even though many of the subsidiaries of the CTS are lagging behind, there was some progress in the Working Party on GATS Rules (WPGR) with respect to subsidies. The WPGR decided that the WTO Secretariat would, by the next meeting, compile information on subsidies employed by Members. The data would be collected from neutral sources including the World Bank, UNCTAD as well as information from the Trade Policy Reviews. There were no advances on either the issue of emergency safeguard measures (ESM) or Government Procurement.

On 9 October the Council on Trade in Services will resume meetings. Members are set to discuss, inter alia, how the CTS will proceed.

ICTSD Reporting.