8:30 AM Mar 24, 1995

ALL THINGS TO ALL RUGGIERO

Geneva 23 March (Chakravarthi Raghavan) -- Renato Ruggiero, mentioned in some western media with the appellation "Rocky" Ruggiero, had two encounters with the media, one impromptu in the morning and another in the evening at the EU Commission offices in Geneva, showed his diplomatic skills and suavity, but not his real personality.

A beaming Ruggiero, appearing Thursday afternoon at a press conference organized by the EU's Delegation to the WTO, said he was going to the Director-General of all the WTO members and contracting parties, and made other statements, on his own and in reply to questions, intended to be everything to everybody, including to newsmen with the pitch (that no diplomat or politician can resist) about his close relations and identification with the media in Rome and Brussels, and hoping to continue it in Geneva.

Given his experience in the legerdemains of Italian and European Commission bureaucracy -- as Italian diplomat, Secretary-General (highest official in a ministry) in the Italian trade ministry and head of the cabinet of EC Commission President, and then as Italian Trade Minister and Chairman of the EC Council of Trade Ministers at the abortive GATT CPs Brussels meeting to wind up the Uruguay Round -- Ruggiero might yet turn out to be a success in shaping up the WTO secretariat as a 'lean, efficient and credible' structure to service the WTO, that he promised he would do at his Washington press conference with USTR Mickey Kantor.

It is not so certain, whether as a politician itching to bring a political air to the job, and with a penchant equal to that of Sutherland in cultivating the media and the publicity that comes, Ruggiero could also impress Third World diplomats as Sutherland did, about his 'fairness' in espousing their interests or prove to be a Wyndam White (the first GATT D.G.) who having serviced the Havana Charter/GATT negotiations arrived in Geneva to organize a WTO servicing secretariat, where morale has been pretty low, and make it functional -- the major task, as many secretariat officials, long-time observers of the trading system and many trade envoys believe.

In his various utterances to the press since 1990 -- when as Italian Trade Minister chairing the EC trade council, he promoted an institutional outcome (calling it a way of masking the failure of negotiations and creating a forum to continue it), through the various remarks and explanations of those remarks -- and in his electioneering campaign, ending in his Washington press conference on Tuesday and two media encounters in Geneva Thursday, he has tried to be all things to all men.

If there was a common thread, three or four times, he made the point of his being "a good friend of the United States" -- mentioning his roles at the EC and OECD, as an Italian 'sherpa' for the G-7 summits, his role in siting Euro-missiles in Italy -- and the fact of their support for his election.

But poring over all his various public remarks to the press, and making allowances for the 'mis-speaks' (a Washington expression about the use of grammarless language by officials that obfuscate or convey the opposite), it is difficult to pin down what exactly Ruggiero and would do at his post.

At his press conference, though invited by a provocative question, the real Ruggiero did not stand up. He tried to put a quietus to the Third World envoys' concerns here about his various remarks and comments about the new WTO agenda, the social standards and trade link and their discussions in the WTO, by remarking that some delegations had raised these questions (at Marrakesh), but it had not been agreed "if there is to be a discussion, when, where and what the purpose will be".

"My personal view is that protectionism is not the answer to this problem," he said.

But in Washington, by the side of Kantor, Ruggiero 'spoke of a meeting of minds' in his talks, adding that he had similar 'meeting of minds' at various other capitals too.

He then addressed some of the WTO agenda issues and, according to a transcript of that conference, on his own spoke of the WTO agenda (in relation to the Uruguay Round agreements and concerns of various countries about particular agreements) and said his only engagement was to implement all the agreements. He then dealt with the importance of the "new subjects", and referred to the various things built into the agreement itself and of the WTO agenda and said:

"So the agenda is more or less already has been agreed. I would say the agenda has been improved and enlarged in Marrakesh. In Marrakesh, I mean, there was a very, very important agreement on the creation of a committee on trade and environment, which is one of the most essential, essential field of action of the WTO because we have really to strengthen mutually, I mean improve and strengthen, the relationship between trade and environment. It will be vitally important if we want to have growth ... and a world in which we all can live.

"As some delegations have proposed, I mean, to have a similar structure for the problem of labour standards. So, I mean, there are a lot of questions which in one way or another have been agreed. Well, this is the agenda, this is the agenda. And of course now the problem is how to implement this agenda; which comes first, I mean how to deal with this problem or that problem. And this is certainly, I mean is not my decision-making power, which I do not have in these fields. But certainly it's the fields of the contracting parties. But certainly we have to see, hands in hands, the structure of the (secretariat?) and the contracting parties, how we will improve..."

"Q: Mr. Ruggiero did you reach a meeting of the minds with Ambassador Kantor about the role of labour and the environment in the WTO? Is that part of the meeting of minds?"

"Ruggiero: Well, we reach an agreement and the meeting of minds on (all the ?) subjects, which does not mean that we see the question exactly the same way, but it means that certainly we see the problem -- that there is no argument that at the end has to be excluded from the talks and from the dialogue. We have to see how, when, but certainly, I mean, we all agree that it would be difficult to see and to exclude arguments which have been raised."

The overall impression on the envoys here, perhaps an unjust one to Ruggiero, is that he would try to push this issue that is favoured by the transAtlantic alliance.

After the negotiations ended in Dec. 1993, GATT envoys and Sutherland, have been emphasising the new trade system as a 'rule-based one' -- keeping clear of the ideological sloganeering about 'free trade' which has no substance in the WTO and its agreements, just as the old GATT had not.

In his Washington remarks, and even more here, Ruggiero has been at pains to note that the decision-making in the WTO (whether for implementation of agreements or any new agenda) lay with the members and contracting parties and not with him as the head of the secretariat.

In Geneva, after the HOD meeting decisions, Ruggiero said Thursday afternoon that his first job as WTO DG would be to promote free trade which he suggested was not an economic doctrine, but meant fighting protectionism and reducing trade barriers to share benefits of growth with others.

"We can't close our borders to goods. If we think we can close our borders, we have to accept migrants from the developing countries. If we think we can close borders to goods and to the migrants, we will be increasing violence in the world."

He also spoke of need to address private behaviours of corporations, consumer groups etc, through a WTO competition rules. But given that the WTO and the 'free trade' slogan implies reducing governmental roles, it was not clear how this would deal with the issue posed by the questioner, namely, the raising of voluntary restraints at a private level on grounds of labour standards and environment -- by corporations and the consumer and other groups in the North.