Ginebra Suiza,
24 de septiembre del 2012.- Sí, el multilateralismo
está en crisis, porque no parece disponer de los medios necesarios para superar
los problemas actuales. Los oradores que tomaron la palabra durante la jornada
de apertura del Foro, a pesar de esta opinión categórica, también se mostraron
optimistas en general respecto del futuro del multilateralismo.
In
welcoming participants to the Public Forum, Director-General Pascal Lamy said
that “the rules of the game — whether in the trade sphere, in the economic
sphere, in the environmental or food security spheres —a nd indeed across all
areas of international policy making, are in need of adjustment.”
He said
that “this year’s forum will deal with a vast array of challenges that you,
yourselves, have brought to the house of trade. Over a three-day period, we
will be hearing from you on issues as diverse as trade and the environment and
the regional Free Trade Agreements.”
The former
President of the Swiss Confederation, Ms Micheline Calmy-Rey, in the Forum’s
inaugural speech, said that “multilateralism is failing on many fronts and is
clearly unable to deliver in these very difficult times we are witnessing
across the globe.”
As an
example, she said that “the inability of the WTO Members to agree on the
conclusion of the Doha Round is certainly a setback that is very difficult to
understand particularly within the context of the current crisis.”
Ms
Calmy-Rey commended “the excellent work done by WTO to monitor protectionist
pressures,” adding that the multilateral trading system “can help (WTO Members)
contain extreme protectionist measures.”
Director-General
Lamy and Ms Calmy-Rey were also members of the inaugural panel session on “Is
Multilateralism in Crisis?”
During the
panel’s discussions, Mr Lamy said that multilateralism is not in good shape
because it is 20 years outdated. With all the changes in the world and in
globalization, the current system shows it cannot adjust to it and the present
economic crisis does not help, he said.
Ms
Calmy-Rey said that the international institutions do not reflect today’s
realities and that there is a big need for reform.
H.E.
Sheikha Lubna Al Qasimi, Minister of Trade of the United Arab Emirates, also
considered that present day rules are not up-to-date and need upgrading.
But to the
question from the moderator, Mr Andrew Harvey, former BBC presenter, on whether
the panellists were optimistic or pessimistic for the future of multilateralism
in about five years’ time, Chile’s Senator Ricardo Lagos, Ms Calmy-Rey and Mr
Nicholas Staheyeff, Vice Chairman and CFO of eBay International, said they were
optimistic.
Ms Al
Qasimi said she was “carefully optimistic” and Mr Lamy said he was “carefully
pessimistic”.
On his
assessment for the future, Mr Staheyeff said that the future multilateral
system will need to learn to cope with increased volatility in trade and
economic conditions and be “ready for a bumpy ride”.
There were
not many solutions given to the problem.
Mr Lagos
mentioned that countries will have to learn to give up some sovereignty, and Ms
Calmy-Rey said that because many issues are solved at the international level,
if countries want to have more influence in the world they’ll have to play
internationally.
Mr Lagos
also made a passing reference to the fact that the five members of the UN’s
Security Council do not reflect today’s realities.
The work of
the WTO was discussed, in particular the importance of this institution to
remove frictions, the negotiations on trade facilitation to facilitate customs
procedures and to remove “trade obstructions”, the fight against protectionism
through its monitoring mechanism and also its work to encourage more financing
for trade.
Ms
Calmy-Rey also said that the WTO system of common rules and disciplines is a
good example for other international organizations.
Por:
voluntarios de la OMC
Sesión 3:
The Trans-Pacific Partnership: A Quest for a 21st Century Trade Agreement
The panel
of this book launch session included some authors and two of the editors. Each
panel member elaborated a particular element of the Trans-Pacific Partnership
(TPP) Agreement and offered hopes of what is achievable in a twenty-first
century, high-quality agreement.
The
moderator and one of the three editors, Dr Deborah Elms, explained that
“twenty-first century, high-quality” means going beyond bilateral arrangements
and addressing the “noodle-bowl problems” of overlapping preferential trade
agreements (PTAs).
Mr Stuart
Harbinson, former ambassador and WTO senior official, thought the jury was
still out in terms of what the TPP can produce with respect to trade in
services, but he saw it as a “pathfinder agreement”. Perhaps it might act as a
catalyst that could work back into the WTO to re-energize services
negotiations.
Mr Aik Hoe
Lim, a WTO official, reiterated the importance of focusing on benchmarks if the
TPP is to be high quality – suggesting a template based on the North American
Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). However, a twenty-first century trade agreement
should also deal with twentieth-century issues. He believed there was a need to
take a business-oriented approach which reflected the commercial reality.
Mr
Sebastian Herreros of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the
Caribbean (ECLAC) described how the TPP interacts with regional measures in
Latin American countries. He warned that what the TPP has to offer them is
still highly speculative and dependent on which other countries join.
With over
400 PTAs in existence, WTO Chief Economist Patrick Low revealed that each WTO
member belonged to an average of 13 – which is hardly optimal. The question is
what role could the WTO play in achieving greater coherence. He suggested
looking at the possibility of taking what is out there and finding ways of
“multilateralizing” it.
Sesión 6:
Plurilaterals and Bilaterals: Guardians or Gravediggers of the WTO?
A panel of
ambassadors to the WTO, representatives of the US and EU chambers of commerce
plus the WTO's Chief of Staff discussed the relevance of plurilateral
agreements to the construction of multilateralism.
Speakers
agreed that "bilateral, plurilateral agreements are like children, you
have to like them all". However, there was a discrepancy in the views over
the necessity to advance the Doha Round.
A panellist
recalled that there are different types of plurilateral agreements. First,
Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs), and second coalitions of the willing like the
Information Technology Agreement (ITA) and the Government Procurement Agreement
(GPA). As pointed out by the WTO Chief of Staff, the Tokyo Round was the golden
age of plurilateral agreements. But the international community has felt the
desire to go back to the Single Undertaking in the Uruguay Round for reasons of
fairness and inclusiveness.
Plurilateral
and bilateral agreements are building blocks for multilateralism
The main
argument here is that the three types of agreements reinforce each other:
First, they constitute an alternative to
the multilateral negotiations in the WTO that are undermined by the slowness of
the negotiations in the Doha Round.
Second, regional agreements are
particularly relevant to small developing countries which prefer step-by-step
trade liberalization. An example was Costa Rica, which progressively opened its
telecommunications sector.
Third, coalitions of the willing have
proven to be great successes like the ITA. The Japanese representative proposed
extending such agreements to the environmental goods sectors.
Fourth, preferential trade agreements
(PTAs) are not a threat to the WTO as only 16% of world trade is made under PTA
regulation. The rest is exchanged
through Most Favoured Nation rules.
PTAs impede
regulatory convergence of trade standards
PTAs
undermine the development of an international playing field for negotiations,
which would strengthen multilateralism. A recent report from the Asian
Development Bank shows that many firms
are unable to adapt their standards to PTAs' regulations.
Going
further
In the
current situation, business sector representatives expressed their frustration
and their willingness to go further on trade liberalization, outside of the
Doha Development Agenda framework. In
their view, agreement on services and trade facilitation (TF) would be more
than welcome. They also expressed willingness to have an agreement on import
tariffs on machinery and chemical goods. Finally, they insisted on the need for
transparency in future agreements and cited as a counter-example the ACTA
agreement.
Question
The WTO
Chief of Staff stressed the need for countries to advance on multilateralism,
pointing out that 40% of exports contain imported goods. The business sector
representative called for BRICs to negotiate as they will in five years' time
rather than how they were five years ago.
A member of
a French NGO denounced trade agreements between countries of different economic
sizes, referring specifically to the
agreement on dairy products between EU and India. The Euro-Chamber answered
that Indians were benefiting from the chemical goods agreements. Mexico added
it had benefited a lot from NAFTA
Sesión 7:
The End of the North Atlantic Hegemony: Rise of New Global Economic Powers
Is the new
balance of power the reason behind the impasse today? This was the question that participants in
Session 7 “The End of the North Atlantic Hegemony: Rise of New Global Economic
Powers” tried to answer.
Economic
multilateralism today confronts two opposing realities — globalization is
moving the world to greater integration, but on the other hand, multilateral
processes designed to facilitate integration in the past are deadlocked, said
Mr Ujal Singh Bhatia, former Indian Ambassador to the WTO and member of the
Appellate Body.
Dr Arthur
Appleton, Partner at Appleton Luff International Lawyers, said that the trade
machinery is not adequate to resolve problems when the trade reality is
changing. The old system aimed at benefiting developing countries no longer
works. New issues like investment, non-tariff barriers and the environment
should be introduced.
Dr Shuaihua
Cheng of the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD)
advocated the engagement of stakeholders in international policy making. What
he calls “three horses” — governments, business community and non-governmental
organizations — should all play an important role in multilateral solutions.
Dr
Jean-Pierre Lehmann, Founder of the Evian Group @ IMD, said that the world has
changed dramatically while the trade institution has not. The rise of China,
the global supply chain, the telecommunication revolution called for a new WTO.
The Doha Round should be buried, he said.
Sesión 8:
LDCs at the Crossroads: Status Quo or Sustainable Development?
The session revolved around the issue of how
least-developed countries (LDCs) could address the challenges stemming from the
need to restructure their economies with the view to promoting sustainable
development in the context of emerging
shifts in trade and investment flows and changes in their institutional arrangement.
The session
in particular addressed two questions:
how LDCs could diversify their export base, and also create a
predictable and transparent economic framework. The panel was generally of the
view that although export
diversification remained a necessary ingredient for development, it was not a sufficient
component and needed to be assessed within the broader context of
competitiveness, structural
transformation and multilateral
/bilateral policy coherence.
With regard
to the question of how LDCs could
diversity their export base, the panel emphasised the heterogeneity of LDCs and the need to look at export diversification, both in products and
process. The panel agreed however, that export diversification should be linked
to the creation of a sustainable employment structure.
A panellist
noted that the rise in African LDC exports was predominantly in
commodities, such as minerals and oil,
with almost no processing and thus there was an opportunity to move
to the next step in the value chain. He, however, cautioned against
African LDCs being pushed into the "raw materials" corner via the
enhanced partnership with emerging economies.
Some
commonly identified constraints for export diversification were cited as being
: i) a poor regulatory environment; ii)
supply-side constraints such as an
infrastructure deficit; iii) lack of private entrepreneurship; and iv) the
global economic and financial crises. Some opportunities for promoting exports
in LDCs were identified as being the growth of regional and sub- regional trade
(particularly intra-African trade) and global value chains. Panellists also noted the marginalisation of
LDCs in services trade and stressed that for landlocked LDCs the focus should
not be on improving market access but rather
on the GATT Article 5 "
Freedom of Transit" provision.
Discussing
the creation of a predictable and transparent economic framework ,
panellists stressed the importance of
WTO accession for the remaining LDCs as this
would create a framework for a secure business and foreign investment
climate and "lock-in" domestic reforms. The panel also agreed on the importance of developing a
coherent and flexible policy framework not only at the WTO but also in other
fora such as the UN (particularly in line with the Istanbul Programme of Action
for Least Developed Countries) and the World Bank.
Sesión 9:
Perspectives on Sustainability: Renewable Resources, Trade and WTO Governance
This
session highlighted a number of issues that demonstrate the unsettled
relationship between sustainability and trade in natural resources. The panel
offered a multidisciplinary approach that, through its use of examples,
crystalized into a discussion of the ability of the WTO system to address the
challenges of sustainable development in a shifting global economy.
The panel
observed that the manner in which the WTO governs trade in natural resources
continues to develop, and is complicated by factors such as population growth,
supply chain diversification, the planet’s bio-capacity and fundamental
questions about the distribution of responsibility for sustainable development.
Such factors are further complicated by the difficulties associated with
identifying and measuring specific problems with trade in natural resources.
For example, the panel referred to whether trade in natural resources could be
treated as a homogenous topic, or whether a proper discussion mandates that
such trade be identified in terms of the specific commodity or industry in
question. It also recognized that existing WTO norms may not equip members with
the regulatory autonomy to address issues of sustainability associated with
trade in natural resources.
Keeping
with the theme of the WTO Public Forum, panellists and attendees discussed how
the multilateral system might address these difficulties. Some proposals
considered the use of existing legal instruments, such as dispute settlement,
which may encourage clarification of unsettled areas of law. Other proposals
focused on reform of the WTO, through renegotiation and amendment of existing
norms, or through institutional reform of the WTO according to which regional
blocs would conduct multilateral negotiations.
Fuente: OMC