WTO MEMBERS MOVE FORWARD ON S&D NEGOTIATIONS

At the WTO Committee on Trade and Development Special Session (CTD-SS) meeting on 8 February, Members decided to move forward with negotiations on agreement-specific special and differential treatment (S&D) proposals, while keeping Chair Faizel Ismail's recently-proposed approach to S&D as a "reference point".

Ismail's "situational flexibility" methodology, presented in CTD-SS meetings in November and December 2004, seeks to enable developing countries to avail of enhanced flexibilities in WTO rules to address particular development challenges while remaining consistent with the basic principles of a rules-based multilateral trading system (see BRIDGES Weekly, 8 December 2004).

The Doha mandate negotiations on making S&D provisions stronger, as well as "more precise, effective, and operational" have not progressed significantly in the round thus far. A split has emerged between two groups: those who want to deal with the 88 agreement-specific proposals for S&D enhancement, led by the African Group of developing countries; and those who want to first address controversial "cross-cutting" issues including the principles and objectives of S&D.

Ismail's approach attempts to bridge this gap by allowing both tracks to proceed simultaneously. The methodology calls for negotiators to cluster agreement-specific S&D proposals on the basis of their motivations or "underlying issues." It outlines four elements of a conceptual approach for doing so: effective market access, enhanced flexibility in WTO rules, consistency with a multilateral rules-based system, and enhanced capacity-building programmes.

Concerned that the talks were becoming bogged down in abstract, time-consuming discussions, Members decided to neither negotiate on the approach nor accept it in its entirety. Several large developing countries expressed concerns that the new approach would introduce differentiation amongst developing countries, while some African countries stressed the need to focus on specific proposals. Members decided to treat the approach as a 'reference point' for actual negotiations on the agreement-specific proposals.

Priority to be given to LDC proposals

Based upon the agreement to move towards concrete negotiations on agreement-specific proposals, Members refocused on the 88 proposals on the table. Following a request from the Least Developed Country (LDC) group, Members agreed to deal first with the agreement-specific proposals that had been put forth by LDCs.

However, there was no decision on whether to reopen the 28 recommendations on S&D proposals that had been tentatively agreed to at the Cancun Ministerial Conference in 2003. The African group has called for their renegotiation, saying that they deliver little value, while developed countries would prefer they be treated as if complete.

Putting Chair Ismail's methodology to work

It remains to be seen how, in practice, Ismail's approach will be used to deal with the remaining proposals. Ismail said that he would circulate a document detailing a potential way forward in the negotiations. It is expected that he will call for the grouping of the agreement-specific proposals into thematic clusters based upon the four elements outlined in his approach, and possibly for the creation of working groups for each cluster. While proposals relating to particular issue areas (such as sanitary and phytosanitary standards) will remain in the hands of the relevant negotiating bodies, it has not yet been decided whether all of the remaining proposals will treated simultaneously.

An alternative approach, supported by Malaysia, would be to prioritise the so-called proposals on which consensus is seen as more imminent over the proposals on which delegates have had the most difficulty finding consensus.

ICTSD reporting.