Alongside an informal World Trade Organization (WTO) ministerial meeting in Davos on 23 January, 17 WTO member states agreed on a two-step interim process to address the paralysis of the Appellate Body (AB).
Since December, the European Union and a few other states, including Canada and Norway, have been trying to get around the paralysis of the WTO's AB by proposing an alternative system pending a systemic solution to this blockage (see EUROPE 12387/23).
The Interim Agreement identified at Davos will be based on Article 25 of the WTO Dispute Settlement Understanding (see EUROPE 12271/16).
In addition to the Union, the other 16 members are: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Republic of Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Panama, Singapore, Switzerland and Uruguay. Despite the presence of China in the 16, however, these countries account for less than 40% of the cases initiated by the EU at the WTO, according to Commission data.
"This statement testifies to the high importance that the EU and participating WTO members attach to retaining a two-step dispute settlement process in WTO trade matters", EU Trade Commissioner Phil Hogan said in a press release, stressing that this arrangement would ensure their access to "a binding, impartial and high quality dispute settlement system".
Mr Hogan recalled that the parties were continuing their work to identify a lasting solution to the impasse in the AB in order to re-establish the WTO two-step dispute settlement process.
Getting negotiations back on track
In Davos, the European Commissioner also called on the members, reminding them of their "shared responsibility" in the face of the crisis facing the WTO and the EU's determination to resolve this crisis in order to identify, in the long term, a new balance within the multilateral organisation.
But the EU's priority is to unblock its negotiating function in the run-up to the Ministerial (MC12) in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan, said Mr Hogan (see EUROPE 12374/3).
The Commission has also put forward ideas to facilitate the identification of a compromise on fisheries support (see news brief). Among other things, it also hopes that the plurilateral discussions on services domestic regulation (see EUROPE 12262/13) and the renewal of the moratorium on electronic transmissions (see EUROPE 12387/34) can be sealed by then.
Mr Hogan took the opportunity to meet bilaterally with several of his counterparts in Davos in recent days.
To read the declaration of the 17: https://bit.ly/2tNcST5 (Original version in French by Hermine Donceel)