Member State Trade ministers, under the chairmanship of Finnish Foreign Trade minister Ville Skinnari and EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström, discussed the World Trade Organisation (WTO), which is facing the most severe crisis in its history.
Two topics were of particular interest to the ministers during the discussions: the preparations for the next WTO ministerial meeting and the blocking of the Appellate Body of the dispute settlement system.
'CM 12' - Nur-Sultan
WTO members will need to work hard and exercise creativity to ensure that the 12th WTO ministerial Meeting, scheduled to take place in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan in early June 2020, produces concrete results.
While the Commission recognises that the challenge is daunting, it has sought confirmation from ministers that the EU would take a leading role here in setting an ambitious agenda, but also a ministerial Declaration that opens up future prospects for the WTO. The organisation should also be able to make real progress in its regulatory work.
"We hope that we could achieve a multilateral agreement on fisheries (…) on the plurilaterals : e-commerce is too early to conclude, but at least an announcement and taking stock is important, the (talks on) domestic regulation in services could possibly be concluded at that time and also either taking stock of or concluding… the investment facilitation agreement", Malmström said.
As for the ministerial declaration, the Commission hopes that "ideally", the text will include sustainability issues, avenues for preserving the multilateral system and a roadmap for reforming the WTO.
This is an ambition shared by the ministers. "It is also the responsibility, the leadership role of the EU", to work for the success of this meeting. According to Sigrid Kaag, Dutch minister for Foreign Trade, it is important for the relevance and future of the WTO that "the Buenos Aires experience", that of the organisation's 2017 summit, which ended in fiasco, should not be repeated.
Taming American anger
At the heart of the WTO's problems is the blocking of the Appellate Body (AB) of its dispute settlement system on 11 December - Washington is still vetoing new appointments of judges to the AB (see EUROPE 12350/16, 12271/16, 12264/16, 12262/12).
The aim is therefore to identify a strategy to engage the American authorities in the reform of the multilateral organisation, while saving this mechanism. A balancing act for the Commission!
Indeed, to date, all attempts to engage Washington have been in vain - and the proposals for AB reform put forward by New Zealand Ambassador Walker in the WTO, so-called Walker report, have been coldly received by the US Ambassador (see EUROPE 12350/16).
Worse still, Europe's efforts - and those of like-minded trading partners - to preserve the WTO's two-tier settlement system at all costs could prove counterproductive.
By bypassing the US blockage and promoting an ad hoc arbitration mechanism (see EUROPE 12321/15), the EU could antagonise Washington: the US administration has suggested that it would consider, in return, blocking approval of the institution's biennial budget.
A balancing act for the European Commission, therefore.
In a debate in which almost all the representatives of the Member States took the floor, many ministers asked the Commission not to give in to Washington.
"We must all continue to support the procedure initiated by Ambassador Walker, but the EU must also continue to explore what alternative proposals would be acceptable to the US", Sigrid Kaag told reporters.
On the other hand, there is concern that the interim solution will be perpetuated to the detriment of the AB system. Finally, a last option could be to extend the judges' terms of office after 10 December.
However, there is little controversy among Member States on these thorny issues. Mr Skinnari and Ms Malmström welcomed this at the end of the meeting: on these subjects, Europe is united. (Original version in French by Hermine Donceel)