The chair of the fisheries subsidies negotiations at the World Trade Organization (WTO), Ambassador Santiago Wills of Colombia, on 15 February reported on the consultations he held with WTO members since the start of the year on the way forward for the discussions. Members remain committed to concluding negotiations as soon as possible and are prepared to continue work, the chair said.
The chair told the Negotiating Group on Rules that he had met with delegations and groups bilaterally and in different formats broadly representative of the whole membership. “From these various consultations, I got the general sense that members are interested in using the current period to continue trying to make progress toward concluding the negotiations as soon as possible,” the chair said at the Negotiating Group’s informal meeting.
During the consultations, many delegations had pointed to issues in the negotiations that could benefit from further technical clarifications to pave the way for final decisions by ministers, the chair said. Several members also had noted that it was important that further work does not unravel the progress made in the negotiations.
WTO members on 26 November 2021 agreed to postpone the 12th Ministerial Conference, due to start on 30 November and run until 3 December, after an outbreak of a particularly transmissible strain of the COVID-19 virus led several governments to impose travel restrictions that would have prevented many ministers from reaching Geneva. Just days before the postponement, Ambassador Wills had submitted a draft agreement on fisheries subsidies to ministers based on the collective efforts of WTO members.
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https://www.wto.org/english/news_e/news22_e/fish_15feb22_e.htm