Fisheries Subsidies, e-Commerce Moratorium, WTO Reform Are MC13 Priorities, WTO Official Says

World Trade Organization Deputy Director-General Angela Ellard said that priorities for the 13th Ministerial Conference, which takes place Feb. 26-29 in Abu Dhabi, are negotiating the second wave of the fisheries subsidies agreement, extending the e-commerce moratorium and continuing conversations on WTO reform.

Speaking at the Washington International Trade Conference on Feb. 12, Ellard said that while informal talks on dispute settlement reform at the WTO have yielded a text, there are still "significant outstanding issues" to be debated. Despite these obstacles, Ellard said the goal is to have a "functioning dispute settlement system" by the end of the year.

One of the main difficulties will be reconciling the members' different priorities, Ellard said. Some members want to revise the old rules and see if they are still "fit for purpose," while others want to add new substantive rules. Another group wants to center the efforts on "procedures and transparency," while yet another wants to focus on "inclusiveness, particularly making sure that all delegations, whether large or small, have the opportunity to participate." Many want advances in all of these categories.

Ellard said the state of negotiations for the e-commerce moratorium are "intense," adding that there's a "lot of interest there." She said that "remarkable progress" has been made on many "key issues" on digital trade, including on "online consumer protection, electronic signatures, unsolicited electronic messages, and open government data." Smaller group work on other topics including data flows and localization, telecommunications services and cryptography-utilizing products has also shown great progress, Ellard noted. Like for dispute settlement, having a digital deal in place by the end of 2024 is the goal, she said.

The deputy D-G also touted the accession of Timor-Leste and Comoros as a milestone for MC13, along with the integration of plurilateral agreements into the WTO architecture. Additionally, getting two-thirds of WTO members to sign on to the first fisheries deal, which was passed at MC12, will be a priority, as are talks on the second wave of the deal. The second deal negotiations are "underway now to come together on tough disciplines for subsidies that contribute to overfishing and overcapacity," Ellard said.