JOB/GC/181  
 
16 April 2018  
(18-2299) Page: 1/2 
General Council  Original: English  
 
 JOINT STATEMENT ON E LECTRONIC COMMERCE INITIATIVE  
COMMUNICATION FROM T HE RUSSIAN FEDERATIO N  
The following communication, dated 15 April 2018, is being circulated at the request of the 
delegation of the Russian Federation.  
 
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Welcoming the outcomes of the 11th WTO Ministerial Conference on e -commerce issues and 
referring to the Ministerial Joint Statement on e -commerce (WT/MIN(17)/60), we would like to 
present our vision on the possible ways of undertaking exploratory work prec eding future WTO 
negotiations on trade -related aspects of e -commerce.  
 
We are convinced that the success of the above -mentioned exploratory work depends on the 
active participation of all WTO Members, without which the elaboration of universal rules on 
effective regulation on e -commerce issues at the international level is not deemed possible. We 
therefore encourage WTO Members that signed the Joint Statement to put in their best efforts to 
involve as many Members into the exploratory work as possible.  
 
1  NEXT STEPS  
1.1.  The exploratory work shall be based on the examination and analysis of the gaps in the WTO 
Agreements related to e -commerce and existing barriers in this sphere. These two elements 
should determine the future coverage of the negotiation on e -comm erce issues, as well as the 
format of future arrangements. Therefore, we believe that the first step  of exploratory work 
should be to prepare such analysis.  
1.2.  Under these circumstances, we suggest that WTO Secretariat could provide an analytical 
survey that  includes the following: examination and analysis of the gaps in the WTO Agreements 
that could potentially affect e -commerce; and overview of the existing practices and mechanism of 
e-commerce regulation (e. g. in regional agreements, free trade agreements , etc.), including an 
illustrative list of the regulated e -commerce issues. Furthermore, for further accumulation of such 
information by the WTO Secretariat, we propose that Members provide the WTO Secretariat with 
illustrative lists of the existing barrie rs to e -commerce.   
1.3.  We are convinced that a collective undertaking of e -commerce related issues will be useful 
for structuring further work in this area.  
1.4.  The second step  should be to determine the scope and coverage of future arrangements in 
order to have a clear understanding of the potential gains from the future agreements. The 
determination of the scope and coverage shall not be based solely on the gaps and barriers 
analyses, but also on developing a common understanding on e -commerce subject matter.  
1.5.  As we have already stated before (JOB/GC/131), Members have always applied different 
approaches towards determining e -commerce subject matter (e -commerce – trade in goods, trade 
in services, trade related aspects  of intellectual property), therefore, differ ent subject matters will 
require specific regulations. We consider e -commerce to be a cross -cutting issue including all 
spheres of regulation, therefore, we believe that a holistic approach to this topic should be applied 
in order to avoid misleading inter pretations and to build a common understanding on this issue. JOB/GC/181  
 
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  Therefore, we suggest that the future discussions cover all aspects of e -commerce without splitting 
topics on e -commerce for separate discussions.   
1.6.  Thus, we have prepared a preliminary list of e -commerce issues that  in our opinion deserve 
Members'  attention. It is in no way intended to determine the scope and outcome of the future   
negotiations, but rather to attract attention to these important aspects of e -commerce. We 
propose  that e -commerce i ssues could be divided into the following two groups:  
1. Matters that fall within the WTO legal framework but need further clarification regarding the 
specificity of e -commerce:  
• imposition of custom duties;  
• application of customs valuation, rules of origin, import licensing, certification, labelling , 
technical regulation and SPS measures;  
• application of traditional principles of intellectual property rights protection in the sphere 
of e-commerce taking into account cross -border nature and innovative character  of e-
commerce;  
• application of different specific commitments under the GATS, as well as separate 
services related to e -commerce;  
• facilitation of paperless trading.  
 
2. Matters that are not covered by the existing WTO rules, but are relevant to e -commerce:  
• authentication and recognition of e -signature (principles and rules of electronic 
authentication and recognition of electronic signatures need to be developed);  
• e-payments (secure mechanism for e -payments need to be developed);  
• privacy, personal data prote ction, secure data flow (mechanism for data protection and 
conditions for secure data flow need to be developed);  
• consumer protection principles (key consumer rights need to be recognize d, which 
include the right to access r eliable information on goods and/or services; principles of 
cooperation between competent authorities need to be developed with a view to restrain 
unfair business practices; protection against SPAM need to be enhanced; measures 
against abuse of consumer rights in e -commerce need to be de termined; etc.)  
 
1.7.  We understand that each Member has his own interest in this sphere, which is why the 
above -mentioned analytical work could help us structure future discussions and define an 
exhaus tive list of issues for discussion.  
1.8.  And, the potential next  step of exploratory work could be to discuss selected e -commerce 
issues.  
1.9.  Overall, we are convinced that such exploratory work structure could help all WTO Members 
to benefit from this process as much as possible.   
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