On Tuesday 4 October, the European Commission published its report on the 20th round of negotiations on an international agreement in trade and services (TiSA), which took place in Geneva from 9 to 25 September under the chairmanship of the United States. The Commission says “good progress” was made at the talks on the draft text of the agreement and on updating the work plan with a view to conclusion by the end of the year.
The parties worked hard to narrow the gap between their positions on the key annexes which relate to telecommunications, e-commerce, localisation, financial services, transparency, and Mode 4 of the WTO general agreement on trade and services (GATS), the movement of natural persons for the purpose of providing services.
They also discussed all the annexes on transport (maritime, air, road), professional services, state-owned enterprises and delivery services, as well as institutional arrangements, including state-to-state dispute settlement.
The European Commission submitted two textual proposals, which were also published on Tuesday.
The first relates to institutional arrangements and aims to allow countries that do not count among the current 23 participants of the talks to join the agreement at a later stage. It also aims to make it possible to bring the agreement into the framework of the WTO at a future stage.
The other proposal, on the settlement of state-to-state disputes, seeks to establish effective and efficient rules for resolving potential disputes on the interpretation and application of TiSA. The text is largely based on the existing WTO model, the Commission states.
Overall, the 20th round brought good progress on the consolidated text. The parties initiated the process to elevate outstanding issues to higher political levels, with an initial exchange of views on some issues among chief negotiators.
The parties agreed an updated ambitious work plan with the aim maintained of conclusion by the end of 2016. Chief negotiators will meet in Washington on 17-18 October, before a full negotiation round takes place in Geneva from 2 to 10 November.
The progress report and the EU textual proposals are available at http://goo.gl/ \\\v6wvzZ (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)