Bridges Weekly Trade News Digest • Volume 9 • Number 2 • 26th January 2005
DG Candidates Follow Up GC Hearing With Civil Society Meeting
In a meeting that marked a new step in the relationship between civil society and the WTO, candidates for the position of WTO Director-General (DG) attended a public hearing in Geneva on 26 January to respond to questions sent in from around the world regarding their vision for international trade. Three of the four candidates for the position — former European Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy of France, Mauritian Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister Jaya Krishna Cuttaree and Brazilian WTO Ambassador Luiz Felipe de Seixas Correa — attended the meeting organised by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), Oxfam International and 3D –> Trade - Human Rights - Equitable Economy. The fourth DG candidate, former Uruguayan WTO Ambassador Carlos Perez del Castillo, was unable to attend.
The organisers had issued an open call for questions for the DG candidates, and adapted the responses into five questions which were posed to them at the meeting, described by Lamy as a ‘beauty contest.’ The questions focused on the candidates’ personal qualifications and commitment to increasing the WTO’s transparency and accountability; coherence between the WTO and concerns about human rights, the environment, and labour standards; the role of the DG in trade negotiations; corporate control of the WTO agenda; and the WTO agricultural liberalisation mandate. The meeting was simultaneously webcast.
Candidates: DG’s power limited
All three candidates stressed that the WTO is a Member-driven organisation, accountable to the governments of its Member states. They asserted that the ability of the DG to influence the issues raised in the questions is limited, since they can only act within the mandate agreed by WTO Member states. Members themselves are constrained, they noted, by the need to reach consensus.
Transparency, accountability, and legitimacy
Differentiating between accountability and transparency, Lamy said that although the DG is accountable only to WTO Member governments (which are in turn supposed to be accountable to their citizens), transparency with regard to civil society has been and will continue to be a priority for him. He noted that the WTO’s transparency towards civil society had increased since Seattle.
Cuttaree said that there is a general perception that the WTO in general is not transparent, and called for more transparency in both national policymaking and the functioning of the WTO.
Seixas Correa said that "good chairmanship" and transparent communications within the WTO would increase the legitimacy of the decisions taken by the organisation in the eyes of Members. He said that though the July Package was largely the work of five countries (Australia, Brazil, the EU, India, and the US), communication about the process via groupings such as the G-20 and the G-90 gave the framework agreement enough legitimacy to receive support.
Increasing coherence amongst international institutions necessary
The candidates struggled to respond to the request to put forward concrete proposals for improving coherence between trade rules and concerns such as human rights, the environment, labour standards, and cultural diversity, i.e., issues beyond those addressed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB).
Seixas Correa "fully conceded" that trade liberalisation "can have harmful effects on these areas," but noted that protectionism could as well. He pointed to the positive links between trade liberalisation and reduced pressure on natural resources. He said that the WB and IMF were crucial institutions for development, but that this "other side of coherence" could be enhanced by deepening institutional dialogue with other intergovernmental organisations.
Cuttaree said that though "we live in a world where international trade will drive the development process," such issues, though central to developmental policy, should be the responsibility of national governments. He pointed to the role of civil society organisations, particularly "a strong trade union movement," in ensuring that governments pay sufficient attention to them. He said that bringing issues like labour standards into the WTO would be wrong, and questioned whether the Member-driven WTO is even capable of adequately dealing with these issues.
Lamy observed that coherence with the IMF and the WB was part of the WTO’s mandate, even though it "has not worked well." Other kinds of coherence, however, have simply not been mandated by Members — and for it to happen, "countries need to push the bar higher." He said that as the EU’s trade chief, he had pushed for sustainability impact assessments to look at trade liberalisation’s potential effects. He also mooted granting observership status to other international institutions as a way to enhance coherence between trade and non-trade issues.
Multinational corporations and the WTO
All three candidates rejected the notion that the WTO is a front for the interests of multinational corporations, the IMF, and the WB. On the question of whether they thought that the WTO should develop an agreement on anti-competitive business practices, Lamy and Cuttaree referred to past WTO discussions on competition policy. Lamy, who as European Trade Commissioner was in favour of launching negotiations on the issue, said that though "there are reasons for such an agreement," "the question was put to the Membership, and the answer was ‘no.’" Cuttaree, who opposed such negotiations, said that the developing countries that rejected competition policy talks did not trust the potential outcome of the negotiations, and preferred instead to keep the matter in the domestic realm.
Agriculture liberalisation concerns
The candidates’ positions on agricultural liberalisation also appeared to carry echoes of the views that they had previously espoused in trade negotiations. Cuttaree, the standard-bearer of the African, Caribbean, and Pacific countries, emphasised that only a small number of developing countries are likely to benefit from agricultural liberalisation. He said that Africa is a continent of peasant farmers whose "ability to compete is non-existent," in the absence of roads, ports, and refrigeration facilities. He said that these supply-side constraints would have to be addressed, with help from the IMF, the WB, and donor countries, for African farmers to benefit from any increase in market access.
Seixas Correa noted that while some may be harmed by agricultural liberalisation, many farmers in developing countries have been adversely affected by subsidised imports from developed countries and could thus gain from the elimination of such distortions.
Lamy, for his part, said that "there is no agreement among the WTO Members that the purpose of the WTO is to liberalise agricultural trade" — they only agree that there is a mandate to make agricultural trade more liberalised than it is at present. He said that some farmers might want WTO disciplines on cotton subsidies while those elsewhere may be less enthusiastic. He also noted that "80 percent" of the reductions in developing countries’ barriers to agricultural imports were not negotiated at the WTO, but rather came in response to demands by the IMF and the World Bank, which he referred to as ‘unilateral liberalisation.’ He said that these countries might actually feel that bringing these negotiations into the WTO would offer them some protection.
The event concluded with all candidates confirming their support of continued dialogue with civil society as a matter of both personal belief and as WTO policy.
The meeting’s organisers stressed that the point of the hearing was not to endorse a particular candidate, but merely to give civil society a forum to hear what the DG candidates had to say. " IATP’s Carin Smaller said after the meeting, "As members of civil society, we are stakeholders in this decision."
The webcast of the hearing is available at: http://www.iatp.org/
ICTSD reporting; "WTO Director General Candidates Seek to Woo Civil Society," OXFAM, IATP, 3D PRESS RELEASE, 26 January 2005.