Peter Gallagher

WTO has pub­lished a report com­mis­sioned for its tenth anniver­sary from a group of ‘wise men’—chaired by for­mer Director-General Peter Suther­land and includ­ing some of the usual suspects—on how to make the Orga­ni­za­tion more cred­i­ble and more func­tional
The 37 rec­om­men­da­tions include some flog­gings for hobby horses (‘free trade agreements&#8217), dubi­ous faith in the abil­ity of ‘sum­mits’ to cre­ate greater polit­i­cal direc­tion, a pos­si­ble return to the use of agree­ments among a sub-set of WTO mem­bers, some ago­niz­ing over the dif­fi­cul­ties of ‘con­sen­sus’ decision-making, a more promi­nent role for the Direc­tor Gen­eral (Suther­land is a for­mer D-G) and, of course, plans to spend more money
Here, I para­phrase and cut the thirty-seven rec­om­men­da­tions back to nine that stand out (not nec­es­sar­ily on the basis of merit):

• Under­take more crit­i­cal appraisal of the ben­e­fits of Free Trade Agree­ments in Trade Pol­icy Reviews. Devel­oped coun­tries to give ‘seri­ous cons­der­a­tion’ to cut­ting their MFN tar­iffs to zero

• Develop bet­ter ‘coher­ence’ in the approaches of the WTO and the World Bank to trade lib­er­al­iza­tion and trade adjust­ment assistance.

• Cre­ate a ‘con­trac­tual right’ for the poor­est coun­tries to recieve ‘ade­quate and appro­pri­ate’ aid to imple­ment their oblig­a­tions under WTO

• Devote greater effort to dia­log with Civil Soci­ety Orga­ni­za­tions (CSOs) includ­ing devel­op­ing a set of objec­tives for the rela­tion­ship with CSOs. Give spe­cial atten­tion to help­ing CSOs in Africa that are ‘deal­ing with trade issues’ in con­junc­tion with regional orga­ni­za­tions and ‘think tanks’

• Expand on the ‘court-like’ processes of dis­pute set­tle­ment (remand­ing some reports from the Appel­late level to pri­mary Pan­els; pub­lic hear­ings by Pan­els). Mem­bers rep­re­sen­ta­tives in the Dis­pute Set­tle­ment Body should review selected deci­sions in depth ‘so as to pro­vide a mea­sured report of con­struc­tive crit­i­cism for the infor­ma­tion of … the Appel­late Body and Panels”.

• Insist that Mem­bers hold­ing out against a ‘broad con­sen­sus’ cer­tify that they do so only to pro­tect a ‘vital national interest’

• Re-examine the ‘prin­ci­ple of pluri­lat­eral approaches’; that is, vol­un­tary agree­ments among a sub-set of the mem­ber­ship like the Tokyo Round ‘codes’

• Set up five-yearly sum­mit meet­ings, annual Min­is­te­r­ial meetins and quar­terly meet­ings of high-level offi­cials with a ‘broad agenda’.

• Define the role of the Direc­tor Gen­eral, give him more promi­nence in nego­ti­a­tions among Mem­ber gov­ern­ments, and cre­ate a post of Chief Exec­u­tive as his deputy as a con­tri­bu­tion to a “strength­end man­age­ment cul­ture” in WTO.