Proposal for a Council Decision establishing the position to be taken by the European Union within the 9th Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO)

The 9th WTO Ministerial Conference (MC9) will take place on 3-6 December 2013 in Indonesia. Negotiations are underway on a set of deliverables that could be agreed at the Ministerial Conference. Some of these form part of the Doha Development Agenda (DDA) and if agreed, would constitute a first step toward the conclusion of the entire Doha round of negotiations. A separate set of non-DDA issues might also be agreed at MC9 but is the subject of a separate proposal for a Council Decision.

With regard to the DDA issues, negotiations are taking place in 3 pillars: trade facilitation, agriculture and development. The EU attaches paramount importance to reaching agreement on trade facilitation, which would provide great economic benefits to all WTO Members. If negotiations on Trade Facilitation move forward as planned in the run-up to MC9, WTO members should be in a position to have a political understanding on the basic text of the agreement. Nevertheless, the finalisation of the agreement text will only occur in 2014 once the schedules of implementation will be ready (regarding those provisions that are planned to be implemented at the moment of entry into force of the agreement) as these will form an integral part of the agreement.

Should negotiations advance satisfactorily in this direction and MC9 will be in a position to reach such a political understanding on the Trade Facilitation Agreement, then part of the MC9 deal will also be to deliver on certain development and agriculture issues. Some of these development and agriculture issues are likely to necessitate a Council Decision already for MC9 and are, therefore, the subject of the current proposal. A separate Council Decision regarding the EU position on the Trade Facilitation Agreement would likely be needed in 2014 once the Trade Facilitation text is fully ready and requires a position by the EU in the WTO.

EUR-Lex: COM(2013)750: Follow the progress of this proposal through the decision-making procedure http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/HIS/?uri=COM:2013:750:FIN

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