With the USA continuing to block the process for renewing judges in the Appellate Body of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) dispute settlement system, the EU is "ready to examine what could be done to improve this system, including the Appellate Body, and to discuss this (with Washington)", Jean-Luc Demarty, the director general of the European Commission's DG Trade, told the European Parliament's international trade committee on Wednesday 20 June.
"Our key objective would be to maintain a two-stage dispute settlement system, with an Appellate Body comprising independent members, as we fear that one of the USA's objectives would preferably be to blow up the Appellate Body and to limit the procedure to a single stage, which would also be non-binding", Demarty stated.
"We need to assess how this arrangement can be improved without challenging the independence of the structures in question. We will certainly take initiatives in the coming weeks with the countries that want to share our approach to these issues", Demarty said.
"For the moment, I don't think China would be interested in a WTO dispute settlement system in which the USA did not participate", he warned. (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)