Czech Business Today

The current international trade environment is a very challenging one and in a world that is seeing the rise of protectionist measures on a global scale, the importance of a well-functioning and rule-based trade environment is essential for businesses to get on the growth track again.

Against this background, European business associations were expecting positive outcomes of the 12^th World Trade Organization Ministerial Meeting, that was supposed to take place in early December in Geneva.

Unfortunately, due to COVID-19 related measures, the meeting was postponed to spring next year. However, as the meeting will be a crucial one, it is equally important to stress the European businesses’ priorities and expectations from the meeting.

First of all, European businesses call on all the members to be ambitious and advance the WTO reform as much as possible. The WTO needs to have a clear agenda and work plan with a timeline for advancing in the most important areas. One of the main challenges that should be solved as soon as possible is the ongoing crisis of the Appellate Body together with overall reform of the Dispute Settlement Mechanism. The non-functioning of the Appellate Body negatively influences the value of international free trade agreements.

Furthermore, the work on the WTO rule book should advance in the area of Joint Statement Initiatives. For example, the negotiations of the agreement on e-commerce and agreement on domestic regulation in services will be finalized soon and there will be new impetus for the negotiations regarding investment facilitation for development or in the area of trade and environment.

Given the overall impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on international trade, businesses think a Trade and Health Initiative should be launched within the WTO that would showcase how trade can help in the fight against the pandemic and help with global recovery. The initiative should focus especially on eliminating trade and regulatory restrictions in the areas of active ingredients, medicine, vaccines and equipment. This initiative would help significantly to increase the resilience of supply chains that were heavily disrupted during the pandemic and prepare the key stakeholders for possible future crises.

Last but not least, businesses call for a conclusion of the agreement on fisheries subsidies that would help to tackle the issue of illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. Overall, European business hope that the postponed Ministerial Meeting will be able to take place as early in 2022 as possible in order to push the above mentioned and very important agendas in the WTO that would help to stabilize the international trade environment.