17/10/2009

WTO: reporting on informal negotiating meetings at the WTO

According to two organisations (ICTSD and Fisheries Forum Agency) the WTO Negotiating Group on Rules met on 24 and 25 September 2009 in the so called "informal mode".

The ICTSD reported in its "Bridges Weekly Trade News Digest" (Vol. 13,  Number 33 of 30/09/2009) that the Group met to continue the discussion on what the Chairman of the negotiating group had labelled the "Roadmap". This "Roadmap" is in fact a rather long questionnaire which, according to the Chair, "[...] identifies the key questions that we need to address in order to reconcile the approaches and advance our work in this area. [...]" (WTO document TN/RL/W/236, p. 2). I wrote a post on 21/12/2008 following the publication of the "Roadmap".

Before commenting (I will do it in a separate post) on what the ICTSD and the Fisheries Forum Agency reported about the discussions at the meeting, I would like to ask readers whether they have found somewhere written records of these so called "informal meetings" on fisheries subsidies negotiations. Personally I tried to find these meetings in the "Official programme of meetings" that is published in the WTO's official website but with no result.

So, these two organisations, ICTSD and the Fisheries Forum Agency appear to have sources that provide them with information on the above meetings, including the contents of the discussions.

Here is the link to the reports by ICTSD:
 
http://ictsd.net/i/news/bridgesweekly/56315/
 
And here the link to the FFA FISHERIES TRADE NEWS : Volume 2: Issue 9 of September 2009 with a report on the same meeting:
 
http://www.ffa.int/node/273

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