RESTRICTED  WORLD TRADE  
ORGANIZATION  TN/CTD/M/18 
27 January 2005 
 
 (05-0329) 
Committee on Trade and Development 
Eighteenth Special Session  
 
 
NOTE ON THE MEETING OF 7 DECEMBER 2004 
 
Chairman:  Mr. Faizel Ismail (South Africa) 
  
A.
 ADOPTION OF THE DRAFT AGENDA ............................................................................................1  
B. OTHER BUSINESS ........................................................................................................................4  
 
 A. A
DOPTION OF THE DRAFT AGENDA  
1. The Chairman  indicated that the draft agenda was contained in Airgram WTO/AIR/2453 
dated 23 November 2004.  The agenda contained tw o items;  one relating to the discussion of the 
Agreement-specific proposals and the other relating to the cross-cutting issues.  He said that he intended, as indicated in his fax of 3 December, to first share and discuss with Members some of his suggestions on the elements that c ould help take the work on specia l and differential treatment (S&D) 
forward.  Then, time permitting, he would proceed to  deal with the substantive items on the agenda.   
2. The agenda was adopted
. 
3. The Chairman  recalled that the formal meeting of th e Special Session held on 28 October, had 
been a positive and productive meeting.  At that  meeting Members had made a number of useful 
suggestions on the best way to proceed.  While so me Members had raised concerns that work on the 
cross-cutting issues should in no way take focu s away from the work on the Agreement-specific 
proposals which had to be completed by end July 2005 , others were of the view that addressing some 
of the cross-cutting issues would enable progress to  be made on the remaining Agreement-specific 
proposals.  Members had suggested that one way of  looking at both these areas simultaneously would 
be to identify the underlying issues that the proposals were seeking to address and to then have a focused discussion on those issues in thematic clusters .  Members had also indicated that further work 
on the remaining Agreement-specific proposals as  well as on the cross-cutting issues should be 
carried out in informal consultations.  He said that  he had reflected on those suggestions and had held 
some informal consultations to identify possible el ements that could guide future work on S&D.  
Based on those consultations, he had attempted to put together an informal conceptual approach on 
the way forward. 
4. The Chairman
 said that in the fax sent to Members on 3 December he had signaled his 
intention to discuss his informal suggestions.  He  hoped that Members had had time to consider the 
elements of his suggested approach, which were in line with the Doha Mandate and the July Decision.  
In fact, reference had been made to both paragr aph 44 of the Doha Ministerial Declaration and 
paragraph 12 of the Decision on Implementation-Rela ted Issues and Concerns in the approach.  He 
also emphasized that the elements of the approach  were not intended to, in any way, dilute the 
flexibilities that were already available to devel oping countries under the existing S&D provisions.  In 
attempting to identify possible elements that coul d guide Members' work, he had come up with a TN/CTD/M/18 
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 non-exhaustive and indicative list of elements that  could be useful in addressing the remaining S&D 
proposals.  These elements included: 
(a) that effective market access for products of  export interest to developing countries 
into world markets remained a critical objective of developing countries in the Doha 
negotiations and an important means of  enhancing their economic development; 
(b) that enhanced flexibility in WTO rules, w ith appropriate transitional arrangements, 
should enable the development of developi ng countries.  These additional flexibilities 
should be made available to those Members that were in need of them to address 
particular development challenges whilst ensu ring that there was no a priori exclusion 
of any developing country from such a situational flexibility.  There should be 
multilateral monitoring of the use of those flexibilities; 
(c) that these flexibilities in the rules would need  to be consistent with a multilateral 
rules-based system that could effectively ma nage the trading rela tionships between all 
WTO Members.  The disciplines of a stre ngthened multilateral rules-based system 
also remained important for supporting de veloping countries' efforts to build their 
competitiveness and integration into the world economy;  and  
(d) that enhanced capacity-building programmes would need to be developed to assist 
countries to implement WTO rules and address supply-side constraints. 
5. He hoped that those elements could assist Members in addressing the remaining 
Agreement-specific proposals and that Members should re-examine each of the remaining 
Agreement-specific proposals with two possible non-exclusive options in mind.  The proposal being 
addressed could either be redrafted or merged w ith other similar proposals in accordance with the 
approach.  At the same time, the underlying develo pment issues raised by the proposal could be 
addressed in the context of some of the cross-cutting i ssues that had been raised.  He said that in that 
context he had reflected on the list of cross-cutti ng issues that had been raised in the previous 
meetings.  Many of the cross-cutting issues seemed to  be effectively included in the broad approach 
which Members had discussed earlier, and which he had attempted to conceptualize.  As for the 
remaining cross-cutting issues, they could be cluste red into four thematic groups.  Those four broad 
groups had been indicated in the fax of 3 Decemb er.  He said that based on Members' response to 
these initial suggestions, he intended to begin a more detailed discussion of the remaining 
Agreement-specific proposals and the cross-cutting issu es on the basis of the four thematic clusters.  
Members could consider combining the first two groups  to create one thematic cluster and the last two 
groups to create another thematic cluster;  discussi ons on which could be held sequentially to enable 
the participation of all delegations.  He said that if Members were to agree on the suggested approach, 
he would then hold open-ended meetings in  which he would combine discussions on the 
Agreement-specific proposals and on the thematic cl usters, so as to enable a dynamic interaction 
between the two threads of the approach.  He was however open to any suggestions that could 
contribute to taking the work forward.   
6. Thereafter, the meeting continued in an informal mode.   
7. While during the informal consultations, Memb ers were cautiously positive and appreciated 
the Chairman's efforts in attempting to come up with  an approach to take the work on S&D forward, 
they stressed that it should remain an informal a pproach.  They raised a number of concerns and 
posed questions on how some of the suggested elemen ts in the approach could be operationalised.  A 
number of Members felt that the approach was aimed more towards a review of the basic concept of 
S&D rather than towards making the Agreement- specific proposals more precise, effective and 
operational as mandated by paragraph 44 of the Doha Ministerial Declara tion.  In that context, they  TN/CTD/M/18 
 Page 3 
 
 
 stated that any approach on further work must be co nsistent with paragraph 44 of the Doha Ministerial 
Declaration and paragraph 12.1 of the Decision on Implementation-Related I ssues and Concerns.   
8. A number of Members questioned how the concept of situational flexibility could be put into 
actual practice, considering the difficulty in predet ermining all possible situations.  Concerns were 
also raised about the possibility of the situati onal flexibility approach leading to an implicit 
differentiation among developing countries and possi bly leading to discussions on graduation.  
Members alluded to the fact that situational flex ibility was still a new notion that was being discussed 
in other institutions.  Some Members felt that such an approach would imply a complete change in the 
existing concept of S&D and consequently in the ba lance of rights and obligations of Members.  One 
least-developed country (LDC) Member stated that LD Cs would need to be automatically granted all 
such additional flexibilities as they alr eady faced all the situations that were likely to be considered.  
With respect to the notion of multilateral monitori ng mentioned in the conceptual approach, a number 
of Members asked whether this mechanism was the sa me as the Monitoring Mechanism that had been 
earlier proposed by the African Group which, among ot her things, was to monitor the implementation 
of WTO agreements.   
9. Although most Members acknowledged the im portance of increased market access for 
products of export interest to developing countries a nd the fact that it remained a critical objective of 
developing countries in the Doha negotiations and an important m eans of enhancing their economic 
development, some of them were of the view that  the Special Session was not the forum in which to 
negotiate market access issues and felt that there should not be such an explicit reference made to it in 
the approach .  Other Members however appreciated its inclusion which they believed followed an 
offensive approach to S&D.   
10. Some Members felt that the approach seemed to give undue emphasis on development being 
the end purpose of S&D, instead of helping develo ping countries integrate into the multilateral trading 
system, which they felt should be the main objectiv e of S&D.  One Member said that it did not 
believe that applying current WTO rules necessa rily impeded the governments of developing 
countries from pursuing appropriate pro-development polic ies.  It was rather a dherence to the rules of 
the WTO that was principally in itself supportive of  development.  Allowing enhanced flexibility in 
an automatic manner could potentially be counter-d evelopment as it might actually impede taking 
necessary reforms.  That however did not exclude the possibility that in certain situations there might 
not be sufficient flexibility in the existing rul es for developing countries to address particular 
developmental constraints that they might face at  any given time.  This Member believed that 
flexibility should only be sought and applied in situations where there was a clear link with 
development and where it could be shown that the existing WT O framework represented an 
impediment to the achievement  of developmental goals.   
11. The Chairman said that answers to many of th e questions that had been posed would only 
become clear through further consultations.  He said that Members would need to discuss, among 
other issues, the criteria that could be used for determining situational flexibilities, and how such 
flexibilities could be monitored.  In view of the f act that Members generally wanted more time to 
reflect and consult among themselves on the approach , no discussions were held on the agenda items 
relating to the Discussion of Agreement-Specific Proposals and Cross-Cutting Issues.  Accordingly , 
the Chairman said that he would hold further cons ultations early in 2005 to continue discussions on 
the approach. 
12. The Chairman also reported on his meeting of 29 November with the Chairpersons of the 
bodies to which the Category II proposals have been re ferred.  He said that the Chairpersons had 
provided him with a status report on the proposals that their respective bodies were addressing, and although very little progress had been made on the pr oposals, the Chairpersons had shown a renewed 
commitment to ensure that the proposals were addr essed expeditiously with a view to fulfilling the TN/CTD/M/18 
Page 4  
 
 mandate contained in the July Decision.  It seemed  that in some cases the discussions had not been 
substantive either because the proponents had not been able to be present or because Members had 
just not engaged fully.  He said that he had highlig hted the importance of coordinating the dates of the 
meetings of the different bodies so as to prevent an overlap.  He would remain in close contact with 
the various Chairpersons so as to ensure that the Special Session ma intained a supervisory role and 
that work in the various bodies was pursued expeditiously.   
B. O
THER BUSINESS  
13. Since no issue was raised under other business, th e Chairman closed the meeting by thanking 
Members for their positive engagement and indicated that the next formal meeting of the Special 
Session would be held early in February 2005. 
 
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