Brussels, 16/12/2014 (Agence Europe) - Intensive work awaits the negotiators of the 160 member countries of the WTO in the first half of 2015, to put together the post-Bali agenda by the end of July, with a view to concluding the Doha round. The 'agriculture' and 'geographical indications' planks remain ultra-sensitive.
Heels dug in over GIs. At an informal meeting of the WTO committee on the TRIPS agreement on 12 December, the delegations said that they were determined to define, by the end of July, the best way of establishing a register of geographical indications (GI) wines and spirits.
“We will have to think concretely about how to structure our work next year and how to get back to the substance of our mandate”, warned the ambassador of Honduras, Dacio Castillo, who is chairing these talks, at stalemate since spring 2011. Castillo proposed to resume the work in February, starting with an informal information meeting rather than a negotiation session. The aim will be to pick up these negotiations where they were left off in 2011 and look at any developments on this dossier since 2011 outside a WTO framework which could have an impact on the talks. Castillo said that the mandate provides for the negotiation of a multilateral register of geographical indications for wines and spirits and called on the delegations to bring in new ideas.
The delegations did not present any new ideas and said that these negotiations should not go back over the substance until a clearer image emerges of the negotiations on agriculture, access to the non-agricultural market (industrial products) and services. On this dossier, heels are well and truly dug in and two distinct groups of countries reiterated their positions.
The first group believes that the discussions on the register should be part of a package including two proposals: - the first, defended notably by the EU, India, Kenya, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Switzerland and Thailand, consists of extending the highest level of protection of the geographical indications currently available to wines and spirits to other products. These countries see this as the best way of improving the sales of their products, by setting them more effectively apart from those of their competitors, and are opposed to other countries usurping their GIs; - the second aims to require patent applicants from divulging the origin of the associated genetic resources and traditional know-how used in their inventions, as laid down by the UN Convention on Biological Diversity.
The second group, which includes the United States, Argentina, Australia, Canada and the Philippines, believes that these negotiations should stick to the mandate. These countries are opposed to extending the register to other products, arguing that the level of protection in place at the moment is sufficient and stressing that improved protection would lead to additional costs.
Two deadlines for the agricultural plank. At the last meeting of the WTO agriculture committee on 4 December, the delegations also undertook to establish a post-Doha working plan by July of next year, but also to conclude, before the end of 2015, discussions on the public stockholding for food security purposes programmes in the developing countries benefiting from a 'peace clause' obtained by India (EUROPE 11207).
On the agricultural plank, the chapters on domestic support and market access continue to be “significantly more contentious issues”, admitted the New Zealand ambassador, John Adank, who chairs the agriculture committee. As regards export competition, the ministers of the member states reaffirmed, in Bali in 2013, the objective of a parallel elimination of all forms of export subsidies and disciplines on all export measures with equivalent effect. This objective was laid down in Hong Kong in 2005 and should have been achieved by 2013. In the meantime, “the level of such support should, as far as possible, remain considerably below the commitments taken by the WTO members”, Adank warned.
The General Council of the WTO of 10 December agreed that the 10th ministerial conference of the WTO would be held from 15 to 18 December 2015 in Nairobi, Kenya. (EH)