Financial Times - December 15, 2005
Making sense of WTO's bewildering variety By Guy de Jonquieres Published: December 15 2005 02:00 | Last updated: December 15 2005 02:00
After the failure of the World Trade Organisation's meetings in Seattle in 1999 and Cancún four years later, Pascal Lamy, then European Union trade commissioner, branded the body's decision-making procedures mediaeval. Today, as WTO director-general, it is his job to make them work.
Many trade diplomats privately agree with Mr Lamy's barb. Arcane rules and jargon make routine meetings at the WTO's Geneva headquarters impenetrable to lay observers. At ministerial conferences, even insiders admit they are often confused about what is going on.
It means that if any decisions emerge from the WTO's ministerial meeting in Hong Kong this week, it is unlikely that anybody will really know who has taken them or how they were made.
Riding herd over 149 different delegations, which must all constantly refer back to capitals scattered across different time zones, is difficult enough. It is harder still in an organisation in which all decisions must command a consensus and can be blocked even by small members. That requires the WTO to walk a fine line between doing business efficiently and keeping every participant involved and satisfied.
It does not always succeed. The big political deals are supposed to be hammered out in the so-called Green Room, an inner sanctum of about 30 ministers from a range of countries that varies according to the subject at hand.
Although indispensable to managing meetings, the Green Room is resented by those excluded. Anger at being sidelined prompted poorer countries to walk out of the Cancun talks, precipitating their collapse. This time, co-ordinators have been charged with consulting and informing them about developments.
Six committees have been set up to negotiate on the main issues. Each spawns countless ad hoc sub-committees, whose work is supplemented by bilateral meetings between individual countries.
In parallel, governments coalesce in a bewildering array of informal interest groups.
The most important is the recently formed G6, which consists of the US, the EU, Brazil, India, Japan and Australia. Almost as influential is the G20, the Brazilian-led coalition of developing country agriculture exporters. Confusingly, its membership and aims partly overlap with those of the Cairns Group, which includes some developed countries.
Members of the G10, which include Japan, South Korea and Norway, style themselves as food-importing nations but are actually out to defend their highly protectionist farm policies. The G90 comprises African, Caribbean and Pacific states and other poor economies.
Then there is a miasma of smaller special-interest coalitions, such as the wonderfully named Friends of Fish and Very Close Friends of Services.
Also roaming the corridors are several thousand representatives of industry groups and non-government organisations. Some are there just to make their case to anyone ready to listen. Others have semi-official status. The US delegation includes business associations, while some poorer countries are advised by non-government organisations, whose views do not always favour free trade.
Much of the negotiating goes on behind closed doors. But it is also played out at round-the-clock press conferences. That is only partly to counter critics' jibes that the WTO is a secretive organisation. It is also because ministers know that their debate can be influenced by how it is reported to the outside world.
Every day, participants pore over media coverage to check whether it is going their way. So far, their public appearances have been mostly ritual point-scoring. But if this week's talks ever get serious, briefings should start yielding useful information.
But, for participants as much as for journalists, judging the meeting's progress and direction can be as much a question of gauging the mood as of getting the facts. With thousands of delegates constantly caucusing in dozens of different groups, few, if any, have a clear picture of the overall proceedings.
As Seattle and Cancun showed, poor information flows can lead to serious errors and misjudgments. On both occasions, the meetings collapsed with little warning. By the same token, it may be hard to know until the last moment whether this week's talks will end in agreement.
After many recent WTO meetings, participants have departed saying there must be a better way of doing business. However, despite numerous proposals for reforms, none has yet been devised.
One reason is the intrinsic tension between ensuring that the negotiations are purposeful and keeping them open and inclusive. The other is that any changes would require a consensus.
Unsatisfactory as the existing system may be, retaining it is one of the few issues on which all 149 members are, reluctantly, prepared to agree.