The 12th Ministerial Conference, the highest decision-making body of the World Trade Organization (WTO), will be held in Geneva, Switzerland, from June 15 to XNUMX. Progress towards agreeing on the partial elimination of fishing subsidies and the exemption of patent payments for vaccines in the months of the pandemic are among the central topics of the meeting. For this reason, the WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, called on Members to make a final effort to obtain substantive results.
At an extraordinary meeting of the General Council held today (07.06.2022), Okonjo-Iweala urged delegations to use the time remaining before Ministers arrive in Geneva to try to achieve the greatest possible convergence on the main issues at stake. “The next few hours will be critical,” she said.
Following reports from the chairs and facilitators of the respective negotiating bodies working on the possible outcomes of the 12th Ministerial Conference, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala summarised the state of play of what she characterised as the «four more pillars«: Subsidies to fisheries, agriculture, services and the WTO response to the pandemicThis includes the waiver of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, as well as WTO reform and issues related to development and least-developed countries (LDCs).
The WTO said in the statement that members agreed on the need to close the gaps in these areas and stressed "the need for ministers in Geneva to work on a manageable agenda and ensure productive ministerial engagement."
Specifically, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala reiterated what she said last month: “The world needs a responsive WTO that helps meet the many challenges of our time and meets the aspirations of the people we serve.”
The 2020th Ministerial Conference was originally planned for June 2021 in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan. Due to the pandemic, the General Council decided to postpone the event until the end of XNUMX and moved it to Geneva, under the presidency of Kazakhstan. (WTO Press Release)
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