Dec 4, 1984

CONTRACTING PARTIES END SESSION AFTER APPROVING BUDGET AND WORK PROGRAMME.

GENEVA, NOVEMBER 30 (IFDA/CHAKRAVARTHI RAGHAVAN) -- The 40th annual session of the GATT Contracting Parties concluded its week-long session Friday, after adopting the budget for 1985 and agreements on further work on the individual points in the GATT work programme.-

The Contracting Parties agreed to hold its next session "this time next year".-

Though there has been some talk of a "special session of the Contracting Parties" in mid-1985 (being pushed by Japan and a few others), there was no such decision, since there was not enough consensus over it, according to a GATT spokesman.-

In comments on Quantitative Restrictions and other non-tariff measures, the European Community raised the issue of the latest U.S. ban on imports of steel tubes and pipes from the EEC.-

The U.S. bans effective November 29 and till the end of the year, in an unprecedented move is also to cover shipments already made.-

The Community spokesman, Tran Van Thin, expressing the EEC’s "strong concern" over the unilateral U.S. action, said the move had come despite the determination earlier this year by the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) that the Community's exports of steel tubes and pipes were causing "no injury to U.S. industry".-

The Community wanted the U.S. to explain what had happened since the ITC ruling to justify its present action, and promptly notify GATT of the action (thus opening the way for GATT consideration of the move).-

The Community, he said, would seek consultations in GATT under the relevant articles of the General Agreement and reserved its "GATT rights" (for compensation).-

The U.S. Representative, Peter Murphy said the issue was already being discussed between Washington and Brussels, and he would be conveying to Washington the concerns of the Community.-

In other actions, the session elected Amb. Felipe Jaramillo of Colombia, as chairman of the Contracting Parties for 1985, and Amb. K. Chiba of Japan as the chairman of the GATT Council.-

Mahmoud Abdel-Bari Hamza of Egypt was elected chairman of the Committee on Trade and Developments which oversees the implementation of part IV of the General Agreement relating to individual and joint commitments by Industrial countries for non-reciprocal, special and differential measures to promote the trading prospects of the Third World countries.-

In summing up, chairman Hans Ewerlof of Sweden said that while not being complacent about progress in the implementation of the work programme, there was no reason for pessimism either.-

Many of the subjects covered in the Ministerial declaration were the "hard core problems for which years of negotiations in GATT, culminating in the Tokyo Round, had failed to produce satisfactory solutions".-

"Some of them", Ewerlof said, "will only be solved through a process of negotiation, and in the last two years our work has been essentially of a preparatory nature. Despite the great economic difficulties under which many Contracting Parties have laboured, there has been real progress in some of the most important areas of GATT work", he asserted.-

The decisions taken on various parts of the work programme at the current session, even where their operational effect "may seem largely procedural", opened the way for "substantive work".-

It had created "a momentum and a clear sense of direction" for further work, and 1985 would be "an important and perhaps critical year for the trading system".-

Ewerlof added: "it is therefore very important indeed that governments should make it their central concern to achieve significant progress in the early months of next year in fulfilling the commitment to rollback protectionist measures and promoting further liberalisation.-

"It is also essential that governments make it their responsibility to see that the follow-up of the work programme is speedy, through and effective".-

"Above all, our work in 1985 should lay the necessary basis for the substantive negotiations which will certainly be needed - and for which a large number of you have called - to resolve many of the major problems of the trading system.-

"If such negotiations are to take place, and to be as productive as we all hope they will be, they must hold out the prospect of concrete benefits for all participants. The object of our work in the period ahead of U.S. must be to ensure that this is so".-