International Trade Reporter
GENEVA--Nearly four months after their Seattle ministerial meeting ended in embarrassing failure, members of the World Trade Organization appear to be shying away from their initial demands for a major overhaul of the WTO's decisionmaking procedures.
Trade diplomats met for an informal meeting of the governing General Council March 28 to discuss improving the internal transparency of the organization and ensuring fuller participation of all members in the organization's decisionmaking process. But instead of embracing the fundamental reforms mooted in the immediate aftermath of Seattle (16 ITR 1990, 12/9/99), many delegations said that only minor changes were needed to the WTO's existing system.
Officials attending the meeting said members generally agreed that decision by consensus should continue to be the rule for the WTO rather than any alternative such as voting, and that a variety of methods for consulting members, including informal gatherings and meetings among small groups of interested countries, were necessary to facilitate consensus.
Members also agreed that modifications needed to be made to the so-called "green room" process, including greater representation and more immediate reporting to delegations outside the meeting room, but that the process s hould remain in place. The green room, which actually refers to a conference room across from the WTO director-general's office, is the term describing the informal, invitation-only meetings used to help build consensus a mong the organization's key members on issues before decisions are made by the membership as a whole.
"There were some very serious ideas put forward on how we can improve our play," WTO Director-General Mike Moore said after the meeting. "I hope that by our formal General Council meeting on May 3 we can take some practic al steps relating to this first phase of improving the way we operate, so that all of us can do our jobs better."
Criticism of Process
Frustration with the green room process boiled over in Seattle, with delegations from the developing world thumping the tables in anger over their exclusion from the closed-door meetings. Representatives from African coun tries issued a statement on the final day of the ministerial denouncing the lack of transparency in the discussions, arguing that they were being "marginalized and generally excluded on issues of vital importance for our peoples and their future."
At the time, U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky joined in the criticisms, arguing that the WTO "had outgrown the processes appropriate to an earlier time," while European Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy declared that the WTO decisionmaking process "has to be reassessed and maybe rebuilt." India, France, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom also called for institutional reform of the WTO in the weeks following the Seattle deba cle.
But enthusiasm for fundamental reform has clearly waned since then--a realization, some officials argue, that the organization cannot reconcile the principle of consensus with an ever-expanding membership without allowing for flexible mechanisms such as the closed-door green room meetings to nurture common consent.
U.S. Defends Green Room
U.S. Ambassador to the WTO Rita Hayes said a major restructuring of the green room process "is neither necessary nor appropriate at this point, and that there is no need to formalize rules for participation in the green room."
Instead, Hayes suggested that internal transparency be improved by increasing the frequency of consultations between the WTO director-general, the chair of the General Council, and members of the organization. She also suggested conducting open-ended consultations with members through regularly scheduled informal
meetings of the General Council.
Hayes also proposed that the WTO provide regular briefings for delegations from smaller member countries and reach out to officials in member capitals through the use of video-conferencing.
In addition, Hayes reiterated U.S. calls for increasing external transparency by providing more timely public access to WTO documents, opening certain General Council and committee meetings to accredited nongovernmental organizations, and hosting regular symposia with representatives from business and other sectors on topics of interest.
EU Suggestions
The EU's envoy to Geneva, Roderick Abbott, expressed support for most of the suggestions put forward by the United States. But in its discussion paper put forward to the meeting, the EU stressed the need to improve the preparation and organization of the WTO's ministerial meetings, the chief decisionmaking forum for the organization.
The EU argued that informal meetings at the ministerial should be broadly representative of the WTO membership and that such meetings "should be systematically followed by open-ended meetings in which a report is made on progress achieved and all members are given an opportunity to express their views."
Swiss Ambassador to the WTO William Rossier argued that while the organization's decisionmaking process could be improved, the system has worked "reasonably well." Uruguay's representative warned against "overdramatizing" the problem, according to officials. Canada's WTO Ambassador Sergio Marchi declared that the WTO was "not broken" and that any attempts to fix its procedures should be met with caution, an opinion also shared by Australi a and New Zealand.
Other members such as Argentina, Hong Kong, Hungary, and South Korea stressed the importance of the green room and other informal consultative meetings in securing consensus while admitting that improvements could be made in disseminating information from these meetings to the membership as a whole.
Developing World Dissent
The biggest dissenting voices were from the developing world. Pakistan, in a proposal presented on behalf of itself as well as Cuba, Egypt, Uganda, and Zimbabwe, argued for an "open-ended" process in which consultations a nd negotiations take place in plenary meetings made up of the entire membership. Deadlocks could be broken through informal meetings among countries most involved in the issue, but the results of these meetings would go b ack to the main negotiating group for further consideration, unlike the de facto decisions from the green room.
India also argued for the need to "de-glamorize" the green room gatherings and said that smaller, informal meetings were acceptable as long as no member felt excluded from the process.
In an apparent dig at U.S. Trade Representative Barshefsky, whose chairing of the Seattle ministerial was harshly criticized by many trade diplomats, the EU discussion paper argued for "a clear delineation between the rol e of the host country and that of the [WTO] director-general." The role of the host country, Brussels argued, "should be limited to chairing the plenary sessions, while all other processes should be handled by the DG."
By Daniel Pruzin
Copyright c 2000 by The Bureau of National Affairs, Inc., Washington D.C.:
