The annual session of the Parliamentary Conference on the WTO, held in Geneva on 1 and 2 December 2006, was an outstanding IPU event and not just because of the impressive number of delegations who attended it and the caliber of internationally renowned experts who addressed it. For the over 400 delegates from 73 countries and 10 international organizations who participated in the session, it was the degree of political engagement and the intensity of dialogue between parliamentarians and government representatives that made the session such a memorable event.
The session was co-organized by the IPU and the European Parliament and took place exactly one year after the parliamentary meeting held in Hong Kong, in conjunction with the sixth WTO Ministerial Conference. In the words of IPU President Pier Ferdinando Casini, who opened the annual session, its audience may have been similar to that of the meeting in Hong Kong, but the mood was not. Hope and expectation had given way to concern, apprehension and doubt. Indeed, the Doha Round is stalled, negotiations are jammed, and the main protagonists have taken a costly time-out.
Trade ministers and senior WTO officials who addressed the parliamentary session, including the WTO Director-General, Mr. Pascal Lamy, were frank in their analysis of the underlying reasons for the deadlock. They did not attempt to hide their frustration at an apparent apathy in negotiations and expressed hope for a prompt "soft relaunch".
For their part, members of parliament considered the challenge to be more political than technical in nature. They insisted that, if the current crisis in WTO negotiations was a consequence of insufficient political will, members of parliament had a role to play in reviving the talks. The IPU President pointed out in this regard that it was for governments to negotiate international trade rules and arrangements on behalf of States, and it was for parliaments to scrutinize and oversee government action, influence policies pursued in intergovernmental negotiations, ratify trade agreements, and implement them through appropriate legislation and budget allocations.
In order for the parliamentary scrutiny of trade policies to be effective and meaningful, it is imperative that parliaments equip themselves with the necessary tools and information to do so. Learning from each other, participating in inter-parliamentary exchanges and debates, engaging in direct discussions with WTO officials and trade negotiators are all part of this exercise. They also constitute the main objectives of the Parliamentary Conference on the WTO.
The agenda of the annual 2006 session included items such as lessons learned from the past and present of the multilateral trading system, the place of agriculture in the single undertaking, the functioning of the WTO dispute settlement system, and the role of parliaments in overseeing government action in respect of regional and bilateral trade agreements.
At its closing sitting, the session adopted a Declaration that calls for a strong commitment on the part of all major players in the trade negotiations, including the European Union, the United States and the G20 parties. The Declaration urges them to reach a balanced agreement on all of the main negotiation topics of the Doha Round, while placing special emphasis on the need to ensure meaningful and sustainable economic gains for developing countries, and in particular for the least developed countries. The full text of the Declaration is available on the IPU website.
