UNITED NATIONS CONFERENCE ON TRADE AND DEVELOPMENT

Trade and Development Board

 

Seventieth session

 (19 – 28 June 2023)

EU statement (check against delivery)

Agenda Item 8: Evolution of the international trading system and its trends from a development perspective

Mister President, dear Secretary General, Excellencies, distinguished Delegates,

I have the honour to speak on behalf of the European Union and its Member States.

Unfortunately, we did not receive the secretariat’s background note within the agreed timelines. Therefore, we prepared this intervention in line with our understanding of the provisional agenda and its annotations.

In light of this, we would like to refer to the ongoing efforts to reform the World Trade Organisation as guarantor of rules-based open trade and as guardrail against a fragmented economic order.

The WTO and its Members today face an increasingly diverse set of global challenges and demands. These include rising geopolitical tensions, the increased role of the state in the economy, the green and digital transitions, the importance of inclusive domestic policies, food security and, of course, the need for a better integration of many developing countries into global value chains.

Finding itself at the interface of these global challenges, the WTO and its Members are tasked with formulating relevant responses. This encompasses due reinvigoration of dispute resolution and negotiation, but also of policy deliberation. By means of this intervention, we would like to focus on WTO’s deliberative function, as the third vital pillar of WTO reform.

The EU has taken the initiative to propose enhanced deliberative engagement, so as to better equip WTO membership to respond to global challenges. The EU has highlighted three areas for strengthened deliberation: trade policy and state intervention in support of industrial sectors; trade and global environmental challenges; and trade and inclusiveness. All three areas have a clear and strong development dimension.

• Last year’s report by four international organisations (IMF, OECD, World Bank and WTO) recommended increased international cooperation as a way to resolve or pre-empt trade tensions resulting from negative spill-overs of state intervention in support of industrial sectors. There is a clear risk that lack of transparency of state intervention and potential subsidy races increase trade conflicts, undermine the cooperation necessary to achieve the climate transition, and harm the interests of developing countries. We need to engage in a conversation about these crucial issues at the WTO.
• Reinforced WTO deliberation on trade and global environmental challenges could cover engagement on trade-related environmental measures, the relationship between trade and multilateral environmental agreements, and the promotion of sustainable development through trade. There is a need to reinforce the capacities of WTO Members to discuss and deal with these challenges, especially of developing and least-developed countries.
• The WTO is facing increased calls for a more inclusive multilateral trading system. A first part of the response must be to ensure the centrality of the development dimension in the WTO reform. An important objective should be to reinforce the role of the WTO’s Committee on Trade and Development as a forum to deliberate on current development challenges, as well as to mainstream more effectively development related issues in the work of different WTO committees.

There are two further key dimensions to the debate on inclusiveness. First, improving the understanding of how to achieve inclusive outcomes of trade liberalisation, in order to spread the gains from trade more widely within societies. And second, strengthening the inclusiveness of the trade-policy making process itself in order to incorporate all necessary perspectives, namely those of non-state actors.

These suggestions brought forward by the EU into the ongoing discussions at the WTO are far from exhaustive and are very much work in progress. However, for the purposes of this Board, we believe it was important to update the UNCTAD membership on our engagement at the WTO, which includes a strong and explicit development dimension.

Apart from these issues, we believe there is scope for constructive collaboration between the WTO and UNCTAD. We are encouraged by recent examples, for instance the workshop under the work programme on eCommerce in early June. There could even be possibilities to sharing experience on result frameworks, work that UNCTAD has been advancing recently. We encourage any such closer cooperation between the two key trade organisations in Geneva.

Thank you.