World Trade Organization (WTO) members continued negotiations on e-commerce, which aim to facilitate digital transactions and build on existing WTO agreements and frameworks. The finalization of the Joint Statement Initiative (JSI) on e-commerce and digital trade facilitation is expected to play a key role in the post-COVID-19 economic recovery.
The WTO launched these negotiations on aspects of electronic commerce in January 2019, with the participation of 76 members. There are now 86 participating members, representing more than 90% of world trade and covering all major geographical regions and all levels of development.
According to a WTO press release, the meeting of July 22, 2021, the facilitators reported on new developments regarding six articles: unsolicited messages also known as spam, electronic authentication and signatures, electronic contracts, open government data, transparency, and online consumer protection. It is part of the outcome that the e-commerce initiative seeks to achieve by the 12th Ministerial Conference (MC12), which is scheduled to meet from 30 November to 3 December 2021 in Geneva, Switzerland.
The JSI on e-commerce has three coordinators from Australia, Japan and Singapore. The ambassador Hung Seng Tan (Singapore) said members have made “excellent progress” in finalizing six articles of a future e-commerce agreement. It added that participants should “build on the good momentum” achieved in the talks by focusing on less controversial issues where members are generally aligned to “identify decision options on more challenging and broader issues.”
In this line, the ambassador George Mina (Australia) welcomed the progress and stressed “achieving a target of 10 to 12 clean articles by the 12th Ministerial Conference.” He acknowledged that more work was needed on key topics such as data flows, localization, source code and customs duties on electronic transmissions.
In his speech, the ambassador Kazuyuki Yamazaki (Japan) expressed the need to address the challenges faced by developing and least developed countries, especially in terms of capacity and infrastructure. Also, in line with its peers, it considered that “progress must be made on some challenging issues” including legal architecture, in addition to those mentioned.
According to the WTO, the plenary session also addressed two cross-cutting issues in the e-commerce talks that had not been discussed for some time but are expected to be discussed in the second half of the year: cybersecurity and the electronic availability of trade-related information.
The JSI on e-commerce was announced at MC11 in December 2017 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. WTO negotiations on trade aspects of e-commerce were launched in Davos, Switzerland, in January 2019, with the participation of 76 members. As noted above, 86 members are currently involved in the negotiations, seeking to achieve a high-level outcome that builds on existing agreements, with as many WTO members as possible.WTO Press Release) (WTO background on e-commerce)
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