News and analysis on trade policy in Europe
Tuesday, April 29, 2025
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala started off her first day in her role as director-general with an energetic speech on what she wanted the World Trade Organization to achieve in 2021. Members agreed today to hold the organization’s next ministerial meeting in the week of 29 November in Geneva.
Plurilateral or ‘Joint Statement’ initiatives launched in 2017 to modernise rules in the trading system start maturing. Now members face a battle over having them established in the World Trade Organization treaty framework. India and South Africa claim Joint Statement initiative deals are illegal In December 2017, a large group …
Negotiations among a subset of members of the World Trade Organization in the area of ‘services domestic regulation’ are one of the few initiatives launched in Buenos Aires in December 2017 that could come to fruition this year.
A warning, this column lets off some steam…
The expectation in WTO circles is that today’s announcement by South Korea’s candidate to the post of director-general that she is dropping out of the race paves the way for the membership’s favourite, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, to become the next boss at the secretariat in Geneva. But let’s not quite expect …
The Korean candidate to become the next World Trade Organization’s director-general has withdrawn from the leadership race.
It’s turning out to be a busy week at the WTO. WTO community worried by EU vaccine export restrictions It’s as if the WTO secretariat were trolling the European Union. The four deputy directors-general currently running the institution issued a statement on Monday, calling for international cooperation in vaccine production. …
Ministers from a subset of World Trade Organization members met on Friday for an annual gathering on the sidelines of the Davos meetings.
The only thing that is certain in this beginning of the year at the World Trade Organization – a body that is yet awaiting the nomination of its next director-general – is that many members disagree. So they file legal disputes.
The General Council has run into a third day of meetings in Geneva today. At the time of writing, WTO members were still meeting. Despite the intensity of the session, there is a sense of failure as the organisation has not been able to agree on anything except the budget …
