JOB/GC/69  
 
25 July 2014  
(14-4317) Page: 1/3 
General Council    
 
  AGENDA ITEM 1 – REPORT BY THE CHAIRM AN OF THE  
TRADE NEGOTIATIONS C OMMITTEE   
FRIDAY, 25 JULY 2014  
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1.1.  Thank you. Good morning everyone.  
1.2.  Reinforcing your statement of yesterday, Mr Chairman, I would like to take this opportunity 
to bid a ver y warm welcome to Yemen, as our 160th Member. Congratulations on completing the 
process — it’s great to have you here now in the General Council, and I look forward to working 
with you.  
1.3.  I would also like to welcome Liberia’s Minister of Commerce and Indus try, Axel Addy, who is 
observing proceedings again today. It is our honour to have you here with us.  
1.4.  Since the last meeting of the General Council in May, the TNC has held one informal meeting 
on 25 June 2014. At that meeting, we continued our discussions on the DDA work programme, 
focusing on the three pivotal and interlinked areas of agriculture, NAMA (non -agricultural market 
access) and services. My statement and the oral reports of all the Negotiating Group Chairs were 
issued in document JOB/TNC/39. I w ould request that they form part of the record of this meeting.  
1.5.  In giving you this report today I am not going to discuss the implementation of the Trade 
Facilitation Agreement. What happens there will have a significant influence on the progress that 
we are able to make in our other post -Bali work, and particularly on the DDA work program. But 
this will be dealt with under a separate item on the agenda. So I will focus now solely on the 
encouraging engagement that I had been seeing on the DDA — and which h ad been increasing 
throughout the year.  
1.6.  I think it was clear from the discussion we had at the TNC in June that M embers remain 
committed to advancing the Doha negotiations on all fronts. At that meeting we heard from all the 
Chairs on their consultations and plans for future work. They each expressed their readiness to 
continue to provide a forum for Members to engage at a more specific level. Since then, the Chairs 
have continued to consult delegations in different formats and configurations.  And my own 
consultations with M embers on the DDA issues were encouraging.  
1.7.  In addition to the work I outlined at the TNC, I have been engaging with many delegations, 
including the regional coordinators, to seek their views and hear their ideas. This has confirmed 
my v iew that we need to focus on the three key areas of agriculture, NAMA and services in the 
first instance — but that we also need to remain mindful of how to move other negotiating issues 
forward as well.  
1.8.  I want to be clear that the attention on agricultur e, NAMA and services is not at the expense 
of other issues. It is just that M embers have been telling me that this is where the critical logjams 
are, and so they will need to be addressed before other negotiating issues can also come into play.  
1.9.  My discussi ons with regard to each of the 3 areas have been positive and encouraging, but 
are still at an early stage. I ha ve welcomed the willingness of M embers to think creatively and to 
be open to new ideas. They also recognise and take account of the significant progress that has JOB/GC/69  
 
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  already been made in the negotiations thus far, much of it reflected and consolidated in the 2008 
texts.  
1.10.  A major challenge will be striking the right balance between agriculture, NAMA and services 
in an overall sense. We can no longer si destep the tough negotiating issues — for example, the 
need to tackle all forms of trade distorting agricultural subsidies; to find market access solutions 
on agriculture and NAMA; and to look at services in greater depth. Here we need to recognise that 
the 2008 texts will need some adjustment, notwithstanding my belief that much of what is in those 
texts, including the overall architecture and goals contained in those texts, can still be maintained.  
1.11.  By talking about agriculture and NAMA together I believe we will be better able to find a 
way through this conundrum. Trying to sequence the conversation, expecting to solve one issue 
before we tackle the other, is not going to work.  We need to recognise that the level of ambition in 
agriculture will be related in part to the level of ambition in NAMA, and vice versa. And this balance 
will inevitably have some kind of impact on overall ambition.  
1.12.  Of course the Chairs have also been actively advancing this work in the negotiating groups. 
They will circulate fuller reports to you, as they deem appropriate, but here is a brief overview 
based on the reports of the Chairs to me:  
1.13.  On Agriculture, since the last TNC on 25 June, the Chair has pursued his informal 
consultations aimed at clarifying t he perspectives that M embe rs have on the way forward for 
unresolved issues in this area. The Chair held two open -ended meetings of the Special Session, on 
3 July and 23 July to provide for transparency and full participation concerning discussions on the 
agriculture negotiations, a nd to provide for an exchange of views on progress towards the work 
programme mandated at Bali.  Two technical workshops were held by the Secretariat to help 
deepen understanding at the technical level of issues that have come up in the course of the 
negoti ations so far.  
1.14.  During the Special Session on 23 July, three proposals were officially introduced by the     
G-33 — one on Public Stockholding, one on Special Products and one on SSM. Most Members used 
this opportunity to confirm and reaffirm their readines s to engage without delay on the work 
programme towards the identification of a permanent solution for the public stockholding for food 
security issue.  
1.15.  Members also had a first opportunity to answer questions circulated by the Chair, in 
advance of the mee ting, seeking to further clarify Members’ views on key elements in the domestic 
support and market access pillars, particularly as they relate to levels of ambition and flexibilities. 
The questions concerned these two pillars as recent discussions had high lighted that both areas 
require more in -depth consideration by Members. The fact that Members addressed the questions 
constructively, sometimes in significant detail, was positive and sets the stage for more concrete 
discussions after the summer break, inc luding on the most challenging issues.  
1.16.  Of course this focus does not exclude Export Competition or Cotton. Rather, all of the 
elements within the DDA agriculture framework are inter -related and there seems to be a general 
acceptance that they will need to be dealt with as an overall package.  
1.17.  In NAMA, an open -ended meeting of the Negotiating Group was convened on 9 July. The 
purpose was for the Chair to report on his consultations and to have an open discussion on the 
way forward. The Chair’s report was cir culated to Members in document TN/MA/26. The focus of 
his recent consulta tions has mainly been on those M embers that have previously been described 
as the "formula applying members ".  
1.18.  The Chair reached the conclusion that in order to strengthen the process , a meeting of 
minds among Members on the goal of these negotiations would first be required. For example: 
were M embers striving to level the playing field in respect of co ncessions granted by different 
Members? Did M embers want substantial reductions in t rade impediments? Or were they seeking a 
result which would bring more homogeneity and strength to the multilateral trading system? The 
chair stressed t hat in establishing such goals M embers had to take into account the assumption of 
trade-offs between the  different negotiating pillars. Some M embers underlined  that the aims and JOB/GC/69  
 
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  ambition of M embers were often different in the 3 key areas of agriculture, NAMA and services — 
which could potentially cause difficulties.  
1.19.  On Special and Differential Treatment, th e Chair of the Committee on Trade and 
Development Special Session convened an informal open -ended meeting on Monday. At that 
meeting the proponents informed Members that they were still working on an overall assessment 
and review of all the Agreement -specific proposals with the objective of identifying those which 
they would like to bring to the Special Session. The proponents have indicated that they hope to 
complete this exercise soon and to table the results of this work just after the summer break.  
1.20.  In the other negotiating areas, the Chairs have continued to make themselves available to 
any delegations wishing to discuss issues or make their views known.  
1.21.  So I am pleased to report that Members were engaging and, increasingly, we are talking 
about substan ce. But, as I see it we are taking only very small, tentative steps forward. There is 
an old saying — you can’t cross a chasm with small steps. Sometimes you have to take a leap. We 
need to be prepared to do that — to go further into the substance of the i ssues that we have 
before us and explore possible trade -offs.  
1.22.  There is a great deal still to be done. I urge you again to engage directly with each other. 
You have to start having those tougher conversations — to discuss what you can put on the table 
that would make trade -offs possible.  So I ask you to reflect long and hard on what the next steps 
will be. As we move forward everyone must be involved in these conversations about the future.  
1.23.  We have had a very good level of engagement so far. Whether, and h ow, that continues is 
likely to depend on other items on the agenda of our meeting today. So how we move forward 
now is in your hands. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That concludes my report.  
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