Global Policy Forum

By World Development Movement

Development campaigners the World Development Movement (WDM) today released a set of 12 action points (1) that incoming WTO Director General Pascal Lamy needs to take in order to adopt basic standards of transparency and democracy in trade negotiations. Pascal Lamy, formerly the European Commissioner for Trade replaces Dr Supachai Panitchpakdi in the WTO's top job on Thursday 1 September.

WDM's Head of Policy Peter Hardstaff said: "Rich country delegations have made little effort to hide their excitement at the arrival of Pascal Lamy in the WTO's top job. They think it unlikely that he will do anything to stop them using undemocratic and untransparent negotiating tactics, such as exclusive invite-only meetings, to get a deal.

"The job of the WTO Director General should be to protect and strengthen the weakest members of the WTO and to ensure trade negotiations are transparent, open to all countries, democratic and put development at the fore. This is precisely the opposite of the role Pascal Lamy played as EU trade commissioner where he pursued his objectives of opening markets for European business and protecting EU farm subsidies at all costs. He has made use of closed and exclusive meetings, and used the EU's massive negotiating strength to bulldoze developing countries into agreement. To say he now needs to go from poacher to gamekeeper would be a significant understatement."

Despite famously describing the WTO as 'medieval' (2) Pascal Lamy has always failed to support calls to reform the WTO's negotiating process or Ministerial Meetings. He has been happy to let the lack of rules for negotiations work to his advantage. At the ministerial meeting in Doha (2001) a deal favourable to the EU was struck after talks were extended by 24 hours. However in Cancun in 2003 talks spectacularly collapsed after African countries refused to cave in to European brinksmanship. Lamy's tactics, identified by many as responsible, were widely condemned.

WDM today called on Pascal Lamy to enact a twelve point plan to make trade negotiations fair. They include stipulations that:

• All negotiating meetings are announced in advance
• No country is excluded from meetings
• The chairs of negotiations should be neutral and elected by all member countries not handpicked by rich nations
• That ministerial meetings can't be extended without warning or agreement
• Negotiators should be allowed time to eat and sleep
• Negotiating documents should accurately reflect the views of all WTO members not just the EU and USA.

Peter Hardstaff said: "These proposals are shocking because they are so basic. The WTO lacks the fundamental elements of a functioning democracy. Ministerial meetings operate without any pre-agreed ground rules where the rich countries, often aided and abetted by the supposedly neutral WTO secretariat, can manipulate the process to get the decision they want. Meetings in Seattle, Doha and Cancun have seen developing country ministers literally left waiting in corridors while the fate of millions of their citizens is decided behind closed doors.

"Far from being the democratic organisation its defenders claim, the bullying behaviour and lack of real rules at the WTO would disgrace a village bowls club. This is no way to make trade rules that affect the lives of billions"

At the recent WTO General Council in Geneva several delegations, and the Africa Group as a whole, expressed their anger at being excluded from key negotiations.

"These proposals repeat the demands made by NGOs in the run up to the Cancun Ministerial. Had such basic rules been adopted before Cancun the talks may not have collapsed. Developing countries were faced with the choice between a bad deal and no deal at all. Wisely they chose the latter, but the situation only arose because the proposal on the table did not reflect the repeatedly expressed views of the majority of the WTO's membership" said Hardstaff.

Notes to editors:

(1) WDM's 12 point action plan:

1. The "informal" green room meetings including "Mini-ministerials" in the preparatory process for Hong Kong must be stopped. They are a breach of the multilateral process to which the WTO espouses.

2. All negotiating texts which are forwarded to or prepared in Hong Kong, must be produced by the membership, and all members should have the opportunity to effectively participate in the drafting, revision and approval. Differences in positions should be fairly reflected as options for example by the use of square brackets. Chairpersons must not present any documents 'on his/her own responsibility' since this destroys the 'Member-driven' and multilateral nature of the institution.

3. The agenda and any draft texts to be used as the basis for negotiations must be approved by the entire membership at a formal General Council meeting prior to the Ministerial in Hong Kong, and confirmed at a formal first business meeting in Hong Kong.

4. Members as a whole should decide if there are to be chairs or facilitators to conduct discussions on certain issues at the Ministerial, and if so they should elect these chairs or facilitators at a formal General Council meeting in Geneva before Hong Kong. Clear rules on the role of these chairs and procedural guidelines on how the Ministerial discussions will be conducted must be decided by all Members in such a formal meeting.

5. The assembly of all members i.e. the Committee of the Whole, must be the forum for negotiations at the Ministerial. Drafting of texts and decisions must be made in that forum in a transparent way, for example with the use of a big screen as in some UN conferences, in the presence of the Membership. Differences in positions can be negotiated in break-out meetings which all Members are informed about and which are open to all Members.

6. All meetings must be inclusive and transparent. The practice of the "Green Room", or exclusive meetings to which only a few counties are invited, must be stopped. No Member may be excluded from meetings. Each member-state must be free to appoint the officials it wants as its representatives, as well as to decide the number of representatives it wants to have at each meeting.

7. All meetings must be announced at least six hours in advance to the entire membership through a daily calendar including necessary information such as the room, the chair and the issues to be covered.

8. During Ministerials, there must be cut-off time in the evenings beyond which meetings cannot be held, e.g. 10pm. This is to cater to small delegations that have no capacity to stagger their human resources and to ensure that Ministers of small delegations do not make decisions when they are completely exhausted in order to end the meetings (e.g. 38 hour meetings at a stretch as in Doha).

9. When new language is proposed during the Ministerial meeting, the member/s proposing the language must be indicated.

10. Any proposal to extend the Ministerial meeting or to amend its agenda or other ministerial processes should be decided upon by all the Members in a General Assembly or Committee of the Whole.

11. Issues outside of the WTO's agenda (such as preferential access arrangements, aid, debt etc.) must not be brought into the negotiations and held hostage to achieve a Ministerial outcome.

12. The Secretariat should maintain neutrality during the Ministerial.

(2) Pascal Lamy on the WTO negotiating process:

"On productivity alone, not bad…medieval it may be in its organisation; but it has been a hell of a good week for Mike Moore and a hell of a good week for the WTO." Closing Press Conference, Fourth WTO Ministerial Conference, Doha, 14 November 2001

"The absurd difficulties of decision-making in this important organisation point to the need for urgent reform in the WTO, something which I know Mike Moore, the current director general is very keen to see." German Council on Foreign Relations, Berlin, 27 November 2001

"Despite the commitment of many able people, the WTO remains a medieval organisation. I said this in Seattle, got a lot of flak and I have to repeat it here. The procedures and rules of this organisation have not supported the weight of the task. There is no way to structure and steer discussions amongst 146 members in a manner conducive to consensus. The decision-making needs to be revamped. The EU remains committed to a strong rules-based multilateral trading system and will continue to work in this direction within the WTO." Press Conference closing the WTO 5th Ministerial Conference Cancún, Mexico, 14 September 2003

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