Brussels, 07/06/2016 (Agence Europe) - Meeting on the sidelines of the OECD ministerial meeting in Paris on Thursday 2 June, the trade ministers and senior officials from the seven stakeholders in the negotiations for a plurilateral environmental goods agreement (EGA) - Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, the EU and USA - worked in close collaboration with the aim of reaching an ambitious agreement with all the other countries participating in these talks, before the G20 summit in Hangzhou, China, on 4 and 5 September.
The participants in this Paris meeting welcomed “the significant progress” made over the 13 negotiating rounds held thus far on the technical level (the next is planned for 20 June), and the “recent efforts” in different configurations of countries so as to establishing a possible “landing zone” for the negotiations, according to their joint statement.
Reiterating their commitment to a “high standard, ambitious EGA” that eliminates tariffs on a broad range of environmental goods, the trade ministers and senior officials from the seven stakeholder countries meeting in Paris committed to stepping up work with the other EGA partner countries - China, Costa Rica, Hong Kong, Iceland, Israel, Norway, Singapore, South Korea, Switzerland Taiwan and Turkey - “to find common ground on an EGA that will improve environmental protection, promote economic growth and create green jobs through an increase in global trade in environmental goods”.
In addition, the door to the EGA negotiations remains open to the other WTO countries that are not currently participating - provided that they show “a similar level of ambition and interest” in the EGA, the trade ministers and senior officials from the seven stakeholder participants conclude.
On the technical level, the EGA negotiations continue at cruising speed along the path mapped out at the beginning of March, following the COP 21 climate conference (see EUROPE 11515). At the last round of talks in mid-April, the parties deepened their discussions on the goods that should be included in the future agreement, and on the technical work of customs classification for the 340 environmental goods included in the list that was decided upon in December 2015 (see EUROPE 11546). (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)