Financing of occasional events in the ESF framework will be examined on a case by case basis. Both the European Commission and the Member States have made clear they would welcome more contributions from business, as was successfully done during the WTO negotiations for specific services in 1997. ESF is set up for a period covering the preparation and subsequent conduct of the GATS 2000 negotiations which are anticipated in the period from now up to and including December 2003. Should the timetable for the negotiations change the operational timeframe for ESF will be reviewed. The services sector is a major source of innovation, especially in electronic commerce, and provides essential infrastructure and value-added investment for trade in goods.
Services are also essential to improving economies of both industrialised and developing countries.
But all other trading partners must be convinced that they have an equal interest in going along the same lines. ESF is determined to support and encourage the movement to liberalise service markets throughout the world and to remove trade and investment barriers for the European services sector, in particular in the fields of market access and national treatment. But the new round will also be a chance to improve GATS as a whole and to strengthen the place of services in the WTO structure. These general issues should logically be taken up before the negotiations on schedules start, since they will influence how scheduling is done. In the coming decades, issues related to international trade in services will present challenges to the multilateral trading system that at least equal, in importance and difficulty, tariff and non-tariff barriers to the development of trade in goods.