Trade negotiations can get pretty arcane, for sure. Late last week, the EU agreed to allow the World Trade Organization time to discuss issues following presentation of what is being called a comprehensive 'road map' for drafting tables that will eventually outline a country's market access commitments.
The EU has developed a complex chart that would trace final commitments back to various levels of supporting data and calculations for market access. This would force countries to verify the rationale behind specific market moves. And all of this is a potential harbinger of a move to restart discussions on the Doha Round of agreements. Of course those have been stalled now for years.
This framework would make discussion of key trade issues easier since negotiators would all be working from the same data set or chart. However, that doesn't mean all charts will be done in time for negotiations. Some WTO members have argued that a few templates would have to wait until some outstanding 'modalities' were settled.
The discussions were held during an information ag negotiations meeting last week including the full membership - called the "Informal Open-Ended Special Session." But the template approach holds out promise of getting through a lot of trade issues in a more efficient manner.
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