MOSCOW, March 2 Members of the World Trade Organization (WTO), following the Ministerial Conference in Abu Dhabi, confirmed their intention to agree on reform of the organization’s dispute resolution system during the current year, the press service of the Ministry of Economic Development reported on Saturday.
The 13th WTO Ministerial Conference was held in Abu Dhabi from February 26 to March 1. The Russian delegation was headed by the Minister of Economic Development Maxim Reshetnikov.
The WTO Appellate Body, due to the blocking of the appointment of new arbitrators by the United States, has not been functioning since December 2019 and does not consider new appeals. Two years ago, at the 12th Ministerial Conference (MC12), WTO members agreed to restore the system.
«»The 13th Ministerial Conference (MC-13) of the WTO in Abu Dhabi, after five days of intense negotiations, ended with the adoption of a final declaration. Among other things, it confirmed the commitment made at the last conference to agree on reform of the dispute resolution system during 2024,» — the message says.
According to the head of the Russian delegation, Reshetnikov, based on the adopted ministerial declaration, Russia considers its tasks completed. “We did not allow our opponents’ attempts to legalize the use of trade barriers under the slogans of climate and environmental policy. This does not mean that attempts will not continue. Obviously, in the next two years this topic will become one of the main lines of tension in Geneva,” Reshetnikov said.
Reshetnikov called another significant result of the conference the conclusion of a multilateral agreement on investment: 123 out of 166 WTO members signed it. “But widespread support shows that the emergence of uniform multilateral rules in the field of investment is it’s a matter of time,” he believes
As noted in the message of the Ministry of Economic Development, during the conference the WTO countries failed to reach a consensus on two agenda items — the program for future negotiations in the agricultural sector and fishing subsidies. “If on the first topic, agreements were practically unattainable at this conference, then on the second, we were close to success. Almost the entire text was agreed upon. The stumbling block was the volume of benefits for which developing countries fought,” Reshetnikov explained.
Negotiations on these issues will continue in the next two years until the next conference, Reshetnikov specified. “There is a text on fishing subsidies to a high degree of readiness. On agriculture, despite the fact that all the problems are long-standing, the approaches to solving them are so polar that points of contact are not yet visible,” he concluded.