Ambassador Santiago Wills Introduces Revised Fishing
Subsidies Text to Facilitate 15 July Ministerial Meeting
To
facilitate discussions ahead of the 15 July meeting of ministers, the chair of
the fisheries subsidies negotiations, Ambassador Santiago Wills of Colombia,
introduced on 30 June a revised draft text. He and Dr
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala,
Director-General, said the proposed changes in the text are intended to point
members towards the convergence needed to successfully conclude negotiations.
"The
purpose of this draft text is to serve as a basis for the ministerial level
meeting on 15 July. This means that it is meant to be a genuine reflection of
the whole group, one that is conducive to attracting convergence," the
chair said in his presentation to the Negotiating Group on Rules at the level
of heads of delegations.
Director-General
Okonjo-Iweala affirmed at the meeting that the text
reflects the chair's best judgement on changes that can help members narrow the
gap in their positions. The revision, she added, can be a good basis for the
more detailed work members have ahead of them to conclude negotiations.
"In
this sense, the text should help ministers to engage on 15 July in a way that
will provide us the kind of push and political guidance that we need at this
stage to be able to move towards conclusion," the Director-General said.
"I sense a change in mood and we should seize advantage of that mood to
push towards concluding these negotiations.”
According
to arrangements presented by the Director-General and the chair to members on
25 June, the ministerial level meeting will be held in virtual mode, with each
minister provided an allotted time to make an intervention before the
concluding session, which will be focused on exchanges on the way forward. The
Director-General and the chair will be sending ministers questions in advance
of the meeting to help focus the discussions.
Under
the mandate from the WTO's 11th Ministerial Conference held in Buenos Aires in
2017 and the UN Sustainable Development Goal Target 14.6, negotiators have been
given the task of securing agreement on disciplines to eliminate subsidies for
illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing and to prohibit certain forms of
fisheries subsidies that contribute to overcapacity and overfishing, with
special and differential treatment being an integral part of the negotiations.
The
chair clarified that the revised text is without prejudice to any member's
positions or views and, for new proposals not yet reflected in the text, more
discussions will be needed to help members crystalize their thinking. He said
that he and the Director-General will continue to reach out to members in
different meeting configurations to discuss the text and prepare the ground for
the meeting of ministers.