International Trade Reporter / Volume 17 Number 16 / Page 626 ISSN 1523-2816
GENEVA--Members of the World Trade Organization have agreed on a schedule of year 2000 meetings for carrying out their recently begun negotiations on services trade as well as their mandated reviews under the General Agreement on Trade in Services.
Members at the WTO Services Council's second negotiating session April 14 decided that additional special negotiating sessions of the Council will take place this year on May 26, July 14, Oct. 6 and Dec. 8, according to officials who attended the meeting.
In addition, members agreed that they will undertake their review of existing most-favored-nation exemptions from GATS rules during meetings scheduled for May 29-30 and July 6-7. That will be followed by a review of the GATS annex on air transport services Sept. 28-29 and Nov. 30-Dec.1.
The air transport services review, which is expected to result in a decision on whether to abolish the existing exemption from GATS for air traffic rights and directly related services, will first examine new developments in the sector during the September meetings before looking at the operation of the annex at the second series of meetings.
No decision was taken on the dates for a third review concerning the GATS exemption for accounting rate agreements for cross-border telecommunications. Trade officials said that members are still awaiting a report from the International Telecommunication Union on the issue before deciding how to proceed.
The meetings are being bunched into services "clusters" that also will include sessions of the Service Council's subsidiary bodies on domestic regulation, specific commitments, GATS rules, and financial services.
Negotiations in 'Plumbing Stage.'
Sergio Marchi, Canadian ambassador and Services Council chairman, said that the negotiations were now in the "plumbing stage." This means that members will concentrate not only on the mandated reviews of the country-by-country, most-favored-nation exemptions, and air transport annex, but also on issues such as the classification and description of services and new GATS disciplines covering the domestic regulation of services, the use of subsidies and safeguards in the services sector, and more transparent procedures for government services procurement.
After work in this area has been advanced, members will start to concentrate on what Marchi described as the "poetry issues," or the request-offer phase of market access negotiations covering an entire range of service sectors.
"It's important to get the plumbing right," Marchi said, adding that the rulemaking work was "equally crucial" as the negotiating phase.
Australia, Singapore, and the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR) members (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay) put forward proposals to the April 14 meeting calling on members to submit initial market access proposals by the end of December 2000, and to begin market access negotiations in March 2001. But trade officials said that several countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) group blocked the initiative, arguing that members should first draw up guidelines for the negotiations before proceeding to the market access phase.
Ministers meeting in Seattle late last year had essentially agreed on a text setting out guidelines, and calling for initial requests and proposals to be tabled by the end of November 2000, but that text fell by the wayside when the ministerial meeting collapsed.
Marchi acknowledged that there was some sensitivity among the membership on establishing parity between the negotiations on services and agriculture, which were also started earlier this year. The MERCOSUR group, which is keen to see progress on liberalizing farm trade, wants progress in the services sector to be matched with that for agriculture. Members attending the first negotiating session on agriculture March 23-24 agreed that the submission of initial proposals should begin by next December so that a "stock-taking" meeting could take place in March 2001.
New Procedures Approved
Earlier in the day, the services council approved new procedures that WTO members can use for amending or adding to its GATS schedule of market access commitments. The procedure will apply to new commitments, improvements to existing commitments, or changes of a purely technical character that do not alter the scope or substance of existing commitments.
Under the procedure, any member seeking to modify its schedule of commitments must circulate to other members a draft of the proposed changes. If no objections are raised within 45 days, the changes are automatically adopted. If an objection is raised, the notifying member must enter into consultations with the member or members that raised the objections, with the goal of seeking an agreement within 45 days. The proposed changes will only be adopted after the objections have been withdrawn.
Telecom Agreement
The Caribbean island of Dominica asked the services council to reopen the WTO's Agreement on Basic Telecommunications so that it could formally accept the accord.
Completed in February 1997, the telecoms agreement contains commitments to liberalize trade not only in the cross-border supply of telecommunications services, but also in the right of foreign companies to establish a commercial presence and operate independent telecom network infrastructure. The 70 countries signed on to the agreement account for more than 90 percent of the $600 billion in annual global telecoms revenue.
Dominica failed to ratify the agreement by the acceptance deadline, which was extended to July 31, 1998. During the negotiations, Dominica promised to open up its market to full competition in sectors such as Internet access, data transmission over closed user groups, teleconferencing, and other value-added services--excluding voice--and to allow cross-border supply of satellite-based mobile and fixed satellite services.
The United States noted that three countries that signed the agreement--Brazil, Papua New Guinea, and the Philippines--have also failed to ratify the agreement and encouraged them to do so as soon as possible. The agreement is not legally binding on the three countries until acceptance is completed, meaning they cannot be subject to WTO dispute settlement proceedings for failing to honor their commitments.
By Daniel Pruzin
Copyright c 2000 by The Bureau of National Affairs, Inc., Washington D.C.:
