RESTRICTED  WORLD TRADE  
ORGANIZATION  TN/TF/M/26 
12 January 2009 
 (09-0055) 
Negotiating Group on Trade Facilitation   
  
 
 
SUMMARY MINUTES OF THE MEETING 
 
Held in the Centre William Rappard
 
from 13-17 October 2008  
 
Chairman:  H.E. Mr. Eduardo Ernesto Sperisen-Yurt (Guatemala) 
 
 
1. The Chairman  recalled that the proposed agenda fo r the meeting had been circulated in 
WTO/AIR/3233/Rev.1.  As indicated in the airgram, the meeting sought to continue the textual work 
on all elements of the mandate, looking also at the areas of technical assistance/capacity building 
(TACB) and S&D.  In addition, Members would address the regular item of participation by the 
Annex D organizations.  
2. The agenda was adopted.  
3. The Chairman  outlined his plans for the negotiating week.  The structure of the session 
resembled that of the last meeting.  It reflected the targeted objectives, seeki ng to advance the textual 
work on the proposals under consideration.  The i ndividual contributions would be taken up in the 
order of their listing in the compilation document, st arting with where Members had left it in July.  
The Tuesday had been reserved for activities among st the membership.  He understood that several 
delegations wished to engage in bilateral and plurilateral exchang es, the way they had done during 
previous sessions. 
4. Questions linked to TACB and S&D would be taken up on Thursday afternoon.  Friday 
would see Members address a few additional ite ms, such as work on assessing Trade Facilitation 
needs, before concluding in plenary mode. 
5. In terms of mode of operation, Members would co ntinue their tradition of conducting most of 
the exchanges in open-ended, in formal mode.  Those working sessions would be complemented by 
plenary discussions at the beginning and the end of the week. 
6. The opening plenary was adjourned  and the informal working sessions commenced . 
A. NEW AND REVISED PROPOSALS  
7. This part of the meeting was conducted in informal mode  with the exception of the following 
interventions: 
8. The representative of Switzerland  introduced proposal TN/TF/W/133/Rev.2 by the former 
Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, the Republic of  Moldova, Rwanda, Switzerland, and Swaziland, 
explaining that there were major and minor ch anges to the previous version contained in 
TN/TF/W/133/Rev.1.  Some of the changes related simply to language.  Th e sponsors had taken into TN/TF/M/26 
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  account the comments made at the last NGTF session in February and had made some restructuring in 
response. 
9. Before going into the changes made, he wished to  flag three corrections to the text Members 
had just received.  The first related to paragra ph 9, which was the paragraph on treatment preceding 
and following transit.  In the fourth line of the paragraph, the word "woul dn't" should be replaced by 
"would not" so that the sentence read:  "Each Member  shall accord to products and means of transport 
which had been or would be in transit through the territory of any other Me mber treatment no less 
favorable than that which would be accorded to su ch products and means of transport if they hadn’t 
traveled or would not travel from their place of origin to their destinat ion without going through the 
territory of such other Member."   
10. The second correction concerned paragraph 18, dealing with cooperation amongst authorities. 
In the fifth line, the words "authorized economic operator" should be replaced by "authorized trader" to be consistent with proposal TN/TF/W/109.  Th e same change should be made in paragraph 20, 
bullet (iii).  
11. Finally, in paragraph 21, there were a few missi ng "s".  It should read "agreements shall be 
reasonable, having regard to the conditions of the traffic" and "These agreements or arrangements".  
It was always meant to be the plural form.  The sponsors would ask the Secretariat to issue a correction of the proposal as soon as possible so th at Members had those changes officially and in 
writing. 
12. He wished to apologise for the very short notice on which the revision of the proposal had 
been published.  One reason for this was that, sin ce the summer break, the sponsors had worked hard 
with the proponents of TN/TF/W/146/Rev.1 in an attempt to come up with a joint proposal, merging 
TN/TF/W/133/Rev.1 and TN/TF/W/146/Rev.1.  Very  good progress had been ma de to that end and 
there had been reason to believe that it would be po ssible to table a joint proposal for this meeting of 
the Negotiating Group.  As a result, the submission of  the revised transit proposal had been delayed. 
Unfortunately, time had run out in the end to find a solution to one small sensitive issue, forcing the 
issuing of a revision of TN/TF/W/133 instead of a new joint proposal.    
13. The progress achieved over the last few weeks had nevertheless not been lost.  Some of it was 
actually reflected in the current revision of the pr oposal and some would serve as a valuable building 
block for the work ahead.  
14. The new circulated text contained a number of modifications to the earlier version.  In the 
definition of traffic in transit, there was a new explic it inclusion of "electricity grids" as being part of 
the infrastructure, as had been s uggested at the last meeting of the NGTF.  The list nevertheless 
remained an illustrative one and was understood not to be exhaustive in any way.  A footnote had 
been added, indicating that the consequences of the inclusion of the before-mentioned kind of 
infrastructure must be subject to further discussion.   Members might wish to review the text and 
ensure that there were no counterintu itive conclusions.  It had to be kept in mind that most of the text 
had been written with only transit of goods by  moving means of transport in mind.   
15. There was a new sentence at the end of the defi nition section, clarifying the extent to which 
the definition of traffic in transit covered the means of transport.  For example, if there was a truck 
carrying goods exclusively destined for overseas, from a country A to the port in a neighbouring 
country B where the goods left that neighbouring country  by ship, the goods were clearly in transit.  
But the truck itself was not in transit according to the definition of current GATT Article V because it 
did not cross two borders.  It merely crossed one bo rder.  Therefore, it was proposed that there were 
special rules for the means of trans port in transit.  They should appl y for the trucks when they carried 
goods in transit.   TN/TF/M/26 
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  16. There was a new paragraph (paragraph 2) on state enterprises.  The wording intended to 
ensure that disciplines regulating freedom of transit were not circumvented by state or private enterprises with special privileges or monopolies affecting freedom in transit.  The typical example 
could be privately run or owned railways, highways, por ts, or airports enjoying a de jure or de facto 
monopoly.  The text was loosely based on GATT Article XVII.  At the time of drafting GATT 
Article V, most infrastructure relevant for transit was government-owned so that this problem had not 
been so relevant.  That had changed. There seemed to be merit in making sure that freedom of transit 
and related disciplines were not circumvented by private enterprises or government enterprises. 
17. In paragraph 3, the wording had been clarified to  better reflect the intention not to modify the 
scope of the provisions in the Trade Facilitation Ag reement with regard to aircraft in transit. 
18. With regard to the section on freedom of trans it and its exceptions and regulations, some of 
the existing language had been rearranged to first state the general principle and then prescribe the 
requirements for the regulation on traffic in transit.  It was merely a reshuffling of existing texts.  In 
the definition of freedom of transit, the explicit inclusion of the free choice of means of transport 
contained in TN/TF/W/133/Rev.1 ha d been deleted. The text had been reworded in the sense of the 
original GATT Article V language.  That had b een done because some Memb ers needed assurance 
that their transport policies, which were based on favouring some means of transport over others, in 
particular through market mechanisms, could remain  in place.  Examples of such policies included 
preference to certain means of transport for ecologi cal reasons, such as by s ubjecting more polluting 
means of transport to higher charges than less po lluting ones.  Members wanted to make sure that 
such measures could remain in place. 
19. On regulations, there was a new paragraph 6.  It was actually not new but simply contained 
wording from GATT Article V, paragraph 4, and had b een included to make sure that no text of the 
current Article was lost.  It contained language regarding the reasonableness of regulations imposed 
on traffic in transit.  
20. The old provision, which started to list the possible exceptions, had been deleted because it 
did not seem a good way to start with an explicit and closed list of all the measures one could take as 
that would exclude other measures which might be  as appropriate for the policy objectives pursued, 
but which were not included in the list.  The pro posal tried to work with the general disciplines 
without making a long list of all the possible measures that were permitted.   
21. There was a strong link with the next para graph on national treatment because national 
treatment would give some flexibility. It would en sure that any regulations imposed on freedom of 
transit for valid policy objectives were restrained as they would also affect domestic traffic. 
22. A major change had been made in the para graph on national treatme nt.  A reference to 
domestic goods and their transport had been deleted in the benchm ark of national treatment.  The 
benchmark was now just import and export traffic.  This  had been done because, in some countries, 
regulations or fees and charges for some local tran sport were subsidized.  There were some regions 
which were far away from the centres and the spon sors did not want subsidies for the purposes of 
regional politics to be extended to all traffic ever ywhere.  The fair basis of comparison was import 
and export traffic for the treatment of transit.  Th is could apply typically on weight limits, operating 
hours and the like.
  
23. With this change, there was merit in looking at the exact coverage of national treatment.  That 
was why "laws, regulations and formalities" had been  reinserted in brackets as being part of national 
treatment.  The sponsors sought the views of th e membership on that matter, having taken out 
domestic traffic as a basis of comparison.  They wanted to know whether Members could live with TN/TF/M/26 
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  laws, regulations and formalities in the definition of national treatment, which was not contained in 
the existing Article V. 
24. On most-favoured-nation treatment, following th e remarks made at the February session of 
the NGTF, there was a new sentence at the end of the text, stating that MFN was applied to "like 
products being transported on the same route unde r like conditions", as was already stated in the 
GATT.  This had been done  for consistency reasons.  
25. On treatment preceding and following transit, it was proposed to extend the protection offered 
by Article V, paragraph 6 of the GATT to cover tr eatment not only of imported goods that had been in 
transit but also of goods destined for export that woul d be transiting a particular country in the future, 
as well as to respective means of transport.  A prac tical example where this could become relevant 
would be a country which was hi ghly dependent on transit traffi c from a neighbouring landlocked 
country.  The outgoing traffic could be used as a means of political pressure on those neighbouring 
countries from the landlocked country.  There was merit in looking into extending the protection 
already contained in the GATT for treatment follo wing transit to treatment preceding transit.  
26. On fees and charges, some minor changes had b een made to ensure that the text was more 
consistent with the wording of the current GATT Arti cle V.  A clarification had been introduced with 
regard to transportation fees and charges, stating that  they intended to also cover "tolls, road charges 
and similar".  The reasonableness was determined, inter alia , with regard to the conditions of the 
traffic, using language from paragraph 4 of the exis ting GATT Article V.  The intention had been to 
increase consistency.  The text had also been restructured to clarify the disciplines on fees and 
charges.  The obligation to inform other Memb ers on the location of the information had been 
dropped as it did not seem necessary anymore.  The matter would probably be regulated in the TF 
Agreement's chapter dealing with publication. 
27. On transit formalities and documentation re quirements (paragraph 14 and subsequent 
paragraphs), the sponsors had wanted to clarify th e wording found in GATT Article V, which, in its 
third paragraph, prescribed that "except in cases of failure to comply with applicable customs laws 
and regulations, such traffic coming from or going to th e territory of other contracting parties shall not 
be subject to any unnecessary delays or restrictions".  This meant that, if there was a failure to comply 
with applicable laws, delays could reach comple tely unnecessary levels.  This did not correspond to 
the original intention of the drafters but to what  could be found in the text.  The sponsors were 
therefore wondering if one could not delete the part  currently contained in brackets without changing 
the intention.  One could still hold up any truck  if there was a problem.  The sponsors wanted to make 
sure that minor breaches of the law, such as a broken rear light on a truck, did not lead to extended 
hold-ups.  That would not seem reasonable.   
28. On bonded transit regimes, the text had been  thoroughly revised, taking into account the 
concerns expressed at the NGTF meeting in February  2008.  The intention was to ensure that nobody 
was mandated to introduce a new bonded transit regime .  But if a Member introduced a bonded transit 
regime, those disciplines would apply.   
29. With respect to cooperation and coordina tion amongst authorities, the sponsors had 
introduced an explicit mention of mutual recognition of authorized traders schemes as a possible area of cooperation.  It seemed necessary to have it ex plicitly in the text as the mutual recognition of 
authorized traders schemes was particularly important  for an efficient transit system at the regional 
level.   
30. A slight change of format had been made regarding the promotion of regional transit 
agreements or arrangements to clarify the text.  A paragraph had been inserted on monitoring as a  TN/TF/M/26 
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  recommended area to be covered by such agreemen ts or arrangements.  Mutual recognition of 
authorized traders schemes had been introdu ced as a recommended area of cooperation.  
31. Finally, there were two new paragraphs (parag raphs 21 and 22) which intended to ensure that 
bilateral and regional transit agre ements or arrangements were not discriminatory and did not end up 
restricting international trade.  It was not the inte ntion to promote regional cooperation in transit that 
lead to more discrimination instead of less.  Th e paragraph on transparency had been moved to the 
end of the text to reduce clutter.  The sponsors e xpected this paragraph to be covered by the proposals 
on Article X in the final TF Agreement. 
32. The representative of the European Communities  presented submission TN/TF/W/149/Rev.1, 
explaining that it provided an update of EC tec hnical assistance and capacity building programmes in 
the field of Trade Facilitation. 
33. The document showed the most recent state- of-play of the EC's very varied and 
comprehensive development aid programmes in the fiel d of Trade Facilitation.  It was a snapshot of 
existing projects and projects in the pipeline over the next two to three years.  There were different 
development aid instruments.  The EC had considered it useful to submit this information at this point 
in the negotiations, primarily to demonstrate its continued commitment to providing support on a 
long-term and sustainable basis, as called for in Annex E of the Hong Kong Ministerial Declaration.   
34. The TF negotiations themselves had given a lot of momentum and provided a great deal of 
political impulse to the provision of development aid and assistance on Trade Facilitation.  Without the negotiations in the WTO, there would not be so much attention in terms of providing assistance in 
this area.  Thankfully, the Geneva process gave the EC and its development partners a very good 
additional set of reasons for giving priority to this area of development aid. 
35. The EC had not only considered it useful to give  an update of what it was doing in this area in 
order to demonstrate that this was very important  to the Communities and its partners but also to 
dispel any worries that, in the light of the financ ial crisis and the global economic downturn, there 
might be any reduction or slowing down of devel opment aid flows.  That was not the case. EC  
assistance in this area continue d to increase in line with th e demands of the Communities' 
development partners. 
36. The document showed that EC programmes covere d all regions of the world.  They had a 
fairly global reach when it came to developmen t aid and assistance.  The focus was, apart from a 
focus on the immediate geographic neighbours, very much on the poor developing countries and LDCs.  The decisions on aid allocations were based on need and on poverty redu ction.  Therefore, the 
aid tended to go where the greatest need was, name ly to the LDCs, sub-Saharan Africa and a number 
of other particularly vulnerable economies and countries. 
37. One of the recurrent themes in the TF nego tiations had been the concern by some smaller 
developing countries that they would miss out on the pr ovision of aid, that there would be some kind 
of funding gap and that the aid would flow to WTO Members who were more commercially 
interesting from the point of view of the donor countr ies.  He could underline that this was certainly 
not true in the case of the EC aid philosophy.  Th e aid went to those countries who demonstrated the 
greatest need.  When developing further the chap ter of the TF Agreement on technical assistance and 
the role of the TF Committee and of Members, langua ge should be envisaged to ensure that, in 
providing assistance, a Member should attach priority  to supporting the needs of the LDCs and of the 
poorest countries. TN/TF/M/26 
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  38. In the area of Trade Facilitation, the princi ple was that assistance was demand-driven.  If a 
partner country did not request technical assistance in TF, the Communities were not going to force it upon a country.  It was always up to the EC's deve lopment partners to request support in this area.  
39. A concern had been raised that , by asking for support in the TF area, that would lead to 
reducing aid in another area such as health or e ducation.  This was equally unfounded.  The EC had 
increased the overall budget for development aid by 32 per cent in their current aid programmes in 
order to ensure that new demands and new needs could be fulfilled.  It did not involve a transfer of assistance from other equally important areas. 
40. The document provided a picture of three categories of TA.  The first consisted of 
programmes delivered by the EC and some subcontractors.  The most important one was the 
European Development Fund for the ACP countries, but  there were many others.  The paper listed the 
ongoing and forthcoming projects provided at the Community level. 
41. The second category related to similar programmes of individual EC member States.  One of 
the notable developments over the last three or f our years had been the very rapid expansion of 
activities in TF-related aid departments and agencies in response to the increasing importance given to 
this area.  This was equally a result of the WTO negotiations. 
42. The third category contained important examples  of relevant infrastructure projects which 
were relevant to the TF agenda.  There had been so me hesitations about doin g this because the EC had 
not wanted to give the impression that hard-core infra structure projects such as ports or roads were in 
themselves part of the TF negotiations and part of  the mandate to the NGTF.  Infrastructure was not 
part of the negotiating mandate, but the EC would be  the first to recognize that infrastructural support 
was absolutely vital.  It was of less value to have  a very simplified, modern customs system, if the 
basic infrastructure was lacking to allow goods to move across countries and across borders.  The EC 
recognized that, in tandem with assistance to customs reform and modernization, an important effort 
had to be continued in terms of infrastructural aid.   That way, one could maximize the benefits of 
simplification of import and export procedures.  Th e EC had considered it helpful and balanced to 
give its colleagues some information on some of th e infrastructure projects which the EC was carrying 
out, in view of their practical importance. 
43. The representative of Cuba
 made a statement for the record .  With respect to  proposal 
TN/TF/W/136/Rev.1 from Canada and Switzerland, it had to be noted that the use of sureties and financial guarantees for the delivery of the goods awaiting the conclusion of the definitive clearance 
was not applicable in Cuba.  For this reason, C uba could not accept the proposal as it was set out in 
the present text.  However, Cuba applied advanced  control techniques such as pre-arrival clearance, 
post-clearance audit and advanced risk management techniques.  It was also possible for the 
admission of 10 per cent of the goods to be formali zed prior to their arrival in the country and the 
importer could use facilities such as incomplete  or provisional declaration of the goods.  
44. Cuba equally applied procedures for the rapid release of shipments.  There also existed 
arrangements with certain entities for the admission of the goods in the name of the customs authority 
at the own warehouses of the importer/exporter, due  to the reliability of the compliance with his 
obligations. Cuba would value an alterna tive text that accommodated its position.   
45. Cuba had a drafting suggestion regarding proposal TN/TF/W/133/Rev.2.  At the end of the 
sentence dealing with general and security excepti ons, one should add "in a justified manner without 
constituting a disguised restriction to international trade".   
46. With respect to TN/TF/W/123/Rev.2 from India, Cuba had serious difficulties to accept the 
proposal in its current form for various reasons.  It would imply a huge economical and work-related  TN/TF/M/26 
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  burden for countries in development in terms of as signing personnel and time to attend to any request. 
It would have commercial implications to provide  information on contracts, goods and their value, 
ports, etc.  Since it was known that some develope d countries applied coercive, unilateral measures of 
an extraterritorial character against countries in development in a totally discriminatory manner and 
contrary to free trade and to all Agreements of the WTO, which also included the persecution of all 
commercial and financial operations that those c ountries, including Cuba, undertook, Cuba was of the 
view that this was not the only way to achieve  an effective cooperation between customs.   
47. Upon resumption  of the plenary meeting, the discussions continued in informal mode with the 
exception of the following items: 
B.  A D HOC ATTENDANCE OF RELEVANT INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS , INCLUDING THE 
IMF,  OECD,  UNCTAD,  WCO  AND THE WORLD BANK, AT THE NEXT MEETING OF THE 
NEGOTIATING GROUP  
48. The Chairman  suggested inviting relevant internati onal organizations, including the IMF, 
OECD, UNCTAD, WCO and the World Bank to attend the next formal meeting of the Negotiating 
Group on an ad hoc basis, as provided for in the Work Plan. 
49. It was so agreed . 
C. O THER BUSINESS  
50. The Chairman  addressed the issue of the Group's next meeting, suggesting to hold it in the 
first week of December.  Details on the timing a nd the agenda would be communicated at a later 
stage. 
51. It was so agreed .  
52. The Negotiating Group took note  of the statements made. 
53. The meeting was adjourned . 
 
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