Apr 29, 1991

NEW NEGOTIATING STRUCTURES SET FOR URUGUAY ROUND.

GENEVA, APRIL 25 (CHAKRAVARTHI RAGHAVAN) – The resumed Uruguay Round negotiations are to be conducted in seven groups, six groups in the area of goods and the seventh on services, it was announced.

"We have changed gears and the new groups will start work in earnest from the middle of May", GATT spokesman David Woods said in an orchestrated effort on the part of the GATT secretariat to suggest that the GATT is back in business and could make some fast progress in the restarted negotiations in the eight weeks before the summer vacations in Europe in August.

Despite this talk, matched by Dunkel’s reported comments at the TNC (the GATT refused to officially make available his remarks at the as usual closed door meeting), participants and observers remained sceptic, and few expect any real negotiations to begin before September.

Observers said that any hope of restoring momentum to the stalled negotiations and moving it to a successful conclusion depended on the extension of the U.S. administration's fast-track authority and the European Community's ability to agree on its own internal reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

The negotiations, re-started in February after their collapse at Brussels in December last, has merely been marking time under the guise of technical work which are being carried on in informal clusters, more or less on the basis of the clusters formed at Brussels for the Ministerial consultations.

There has been an informal understanding that substantive negotiations would be attempted only after the U.S. administration wins its fast-track authority extension, and even then progress in other areas would depend on the EC's ability to move substantially forward on Agriculture.

While there had been some effort by the GATT secretariat and the three majors to continue the further negotiations in the same informal and non-transparent ways, Third World delegations and some of the smaller industrialised countries too made clear their opposition and demanded negotiations open to all participants.

The TNC's formal approval in February last for the restart of the negotiations was on the basis that the Punta del Este structure of separate negotiations on goods and services would have to be maintained, and that the new organisation and structures for the goods negotiations would be evolved in full consultations with participants and ensure transparency.

The six new groups now agreed to on trade in goods negotiations, functioning under the Group of Negotiations on Goods (GNG), will replace the earlier 14 negotiating groups in which the negotiations on trade in goods had been conducted from the 1987 till the Brussels Ministerial meeting.

The Group of Negotiations on Services (GNS). established at Punta del Este by the Ministerial Declaration will continue as is and function separately.

The announcement by the GATT spokesman came after meetings Thursday of the GNG, the GNS and the Trade Negotiations Committee (TNC) where the new structures, the items to be covered by each of them and the individuals to chair them, were formally approved.

The details (in the goods area) were settled in informal consultations by the Chairman of the GATT Contracting Parties, Amb. Rubens Ricupero of Brazil, who reported on them to the GNG and TNC.

Dunkel told the TNC that the new organisational structure was meant to be flexible and result oriented and designed to help substantial negotiations and political breakthroughs.

"If the current drift is to be prevented, we should be making substantial progress in the three months before the summer recess in July", Dunkel was quoted by the spokesman as telling the TNC.

Dunkel said that the GATT secretariat and the chairmen of the groups would draw up a programme and time-table for the various groups and their meetings.

Earlier, in presenting the proposals for the Organisation of the goods negotiations and the persons to lead them, Ricupero had said the chairmen moderating the discussions "may in due course need to be assisted in their task by persons whom they would choose in full consultation with participants".

This appeared to underscore the concern of the participants, particularly from the Third World, and ensure that the processes remain transparent and involve everyone, reducing the scope for manipulation of the process by major trading partners.

While two of the groups, that on Rule making and for GNS, personalities were named to assist the chairmen concerned, no one has yet been named for the two other major negotiating areas (Textiles and Clothing and Agriculture), both chaired by Dunkel.

Two names had been mentioned in this regard over the last few days of consultations: Aart de Zheew of Netherlands (who chaired the Agriculture Negotiating Group before Brussels) to assist Dunkel on agriculture and Marcelo Raffaelli of Brazil (who is chairman of the Textile Surveillance Body) on textiles, and there had been reports that the understanding on the structures included this.

However, no announcement was made at the GNG or TNC on these.

The failure to announce these names would appear to be related to the attempts of some in the secretariat and of at least one of the major importing countries to secure a more pliable personality on textiles and clothing negotiations.

Four areas of negotiations - tariffs, non-tariff measures, natural resource based products and tropical products - are to be grouped together under a "Market Access" group which would be chaired by Canada's Germain Denis, an Assistant Deputy Minister for Multilateral Trade Negotiations in Canada's Department of External Affairs and International Trade.

Under the rubric of "Rule-making", another group, chaired by Ambassador George Maciel of Brazil, will deal with subsidies and countervailing duties, anti-dumping, safeguards, pre-shipment inspection, rules of origin, technical barriers to trade import licensing procedures, customs valuation, government procurement and a number of specific GATT articles.

The same group will also deal with the subject of Trade related Investment Measures (TRIMs).

Maciel was the chairman of the negotiating group on safeguards under the previous negotiating structures.

While in some of these areas there are texts with large areas of agreement, some others, like antidumping and TRIMs, have problems of fundamental differences without any agreed text.

Maciel will be assisted, in his work of moderating the negotiations in the "Rule-making" area, by Rudi Ramsauer, Deputy Permanent Representative of Switzerland to GATT.

Lars Anell of Sweden will continue to chair the negotiations on Trade-related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs).

A sixth group chaired by Amb. Julio Lacarte-Muro of Uruguay, will deal with negotiations on "Institutions" - Final Act, Dispute Settlement and FOGs (Functioning of the GATT System). Felipe Jaramillo of Colombia who continues to chair the GNS announced at the TNC that he would be assisted by Amb. David Hawes of Australia.