The Trade Ministers of Australia, Japan and Singapore announced on Tuesday (14.12.2021) significant progress in the ongoing e-commerce negotiations within the World Trade Organization (WTO).
According to the statement issued, a "good convergence" has been achieved in eight questions, namely: online consumer protection; electronic authentication and signatures; unsolicited commercial electronic messages; open government data; electronic contracts; transparency; paperless trade and open Internet access.
He stressed that the ministers have set themselves the “objective of ensuring convergence on the majority of issues that remain open to debate by the end of 2022”.
He then states that “Ministers noted the support of the participants in the initiative for the continuation of the multilateral moratorium on electronic commerce”. In this way, “they consider it crucial that the initiative of not imposing customs duties on electronic transmissions becomes permanent among the participants.”
It should be noted that seventy-one WTO members announced the joint declaration initiative on e-commerce at the 11th Ministerial Conference in December 2017 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Negotiations were launched in Davos, Switzerland, in January 2019, with the participation of 76 members. Currently, 86 members are involved in the negotiations.WTO Press Release)
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