The World Trade Organisation went into a two-week recess following the General Council meeting on 24-25 July, leaving behind the distinct impression that vital stages in the further elaboration of the "skeletal draft declaration" for Cancun released on 18 July will be carried out in the dark, with little chance for the majority of the (developing country) members to have their imprint on the text as it is actually put together and transmitted to Ministers in Cancun.
At a briefing for the media on 25 July together with Dr. Supachai Panitchpakdi, WTO Director-General, Ambassador Perez del Castillo (Uruguay), Chairman of the General Council (GC) outlined what both he and Supachai were at pains to portray as participatory and inclusive procedures for preparing the draft text for Cancun.
As it turns out, however, the procedure outlined would seem to be a punishing schedule of "informal consultations", some involving all members, others confidential and open to only small groups, and still others at the bilateral level. At the end of it all the text is still likely to be transmitted to Cancun over the heads of delegates in Geneva.
The WTO convenes again on 11 August. On 22 August the General Council chairman would release a second draft of the Cancun Ministerial Declaration. Then on 25-26 August a formal meeting of the General Council will be held to discuss the draft.
The mechanisms by which the views of members can be brought into the 22 August draft, by which proposals to revise this draft before the 25-26 August General Council (GC) meeting, and by which the views at the GC meeting can be incorporated into the text, have not been spelt out. The strong suspicion is that there is no such mechanisms have been planned. Thus, although all kinds of views may be expressed at all kinds of meetings, it is likely that the 22 August draft will still be sent on to Cancun, on the "personal responsibility" of the GC Chairman.
According to the schedule outlined by Ambassador Castillo, informal open-ended meetings of heads of delegations (HOD), to which all member countries are invited, will be held every morning starting on 11 August, and these will examine specific key issues contained in the first draft of the Ministerial declaration.
These prominent issues (defined as issues on which ministers need to take decisions in Cancun) include agriculture modalities, non-agriculture market access, registry of geographical indications (Gis), the Singapore issues, implementation issues, Special and Differential treatment (SDT) and TRIPS and public health. These issues will be considered at the HOD meetings in the first week, and the other issues contained in the draft text, such as services and rules, will be looked at in the second week of consultations.
The afternoons will be devoted to various consultations in different formats -- meetings in small groups and bilateral consultations - which would be in small groups and are not open to all members. The GC Chair would conduct some of the meetings.
By 22 August, as Mr. Castillo put it, "we will be putting to members a final draft on what the text should be that will reflect the progress achieved and the realities of the day."
A formal General Council meeting has been scheduled for 25-26 August with senior officials from capitals attending. Thereafter a final draft text will be submitted to the Ministers.
It is not known whether this text for Cancun will be the same as the 22 August draft.
There is little in the nature and schedule of activities as outlined that would give confidence to the majority of developing countries that their issues and perspectives will be properly reflected in draft Declaration that will be transmitted to Cancun.
The decision to convene a General Council meeting on 25-26 August is a change of plans. In the WTO schedule of meetings, no GC meeting had been fixed fro August. But some developing countries criticised the lack of opportunity for members to voice their views or to adopt or revise the drafts. At various meetings (including the recent Trade Negotiatons Committee meeting), they requested for a formal meeting on the draft text before it is transmitted from Geneva.
However this apparent responsiveness to developing country demands is defective in one of the critical regard. This concerns whether the final draft text will be a consensus text agreed at the General Council meeting, or something that the GC Chairman will send on to Cancun under his own responsibility. In the latter case, the developing countries rightfully fear their views will not be represented.
During the media briefing, Amb Castillo stated that he was 'confident that there will be ample time from 26 August till 10 September (when the Cancun ministerial opens) for the ministers to consult among themselves, so that by the time of Cancun there will hopefully be a text with a 'lot of flesh in it' that will facilitate the task.' (as reported in SUNS 5393).
Thus, after the GC meeting, the draft declaration may continue to evolve through ministerial level consultations involving a few counties. This is not part of the formal processes of the WTO. Most members, especially developing countries, would be excluded. It is most unlikely that a draft that emerges in this way will adequately reflect the views of all members, especially since there is still contention over so many key issues, which form the content of the text.
Thus it is not clear on whose authority such a final draft text will be placed before Ministers at Cancun, especially if members at the General Council meeting dispute various parts of the draft.
This is a throw-back to the pre-Doha situation in 2001, which the draft Declaration with which the majority of the members disagreed, was nevertheless sent on to the Ministerial, on the personal responsibility of the then GC Chair, Amb. Stuart Harbinson of Hong Kong, against the express wishes of many members.
Apart from these problems with how the draft text is finally transmitted to Cancun, the actual daily process of consultations, which is supposed to input into formulation of the text, does not offer much comfort to most of the developing country members either. This is in spite of the reassurances of Amb. Castillo and Dr Supachai to the contrary.
At the media briefing, a journalist asked these two officials to comment on the criticisms by NGOs that the decision-making processes, especially surrounding Ministerials and their preparatory process, in the WTO are untransparent and non-inclusive,
Supachai stated that almost all the key issues have been addressed at the HOD level and everyone had been part of the discussions and negotiations all the time. He added there have been very few small group meetings and the ones he conducted in the past two weeks have been mainly with the senior officials from capitals, participating in the General Council and the TNC. He insisted that there has always been full transparency in all respects.
The issue, however, is which of the consultations will be decisive in making the deals that will form the content of the text. On the evidence of the expectations expressed by Supachai and Castillo, the decisive consultations will be those carried out in the closed, '"confidential" small groups and/or bilateral meetings from which most members are excluded, rather than the large open-ended informal heads of delegations.
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