At a CSIS event today on "Rethinking Trade In a Geopolitical Context: Trends and Transatlantic Cooperation," European Commission Director General for Trade Sabine Weyand spoke with Bill Reinsch about a number of issues, and they had this exchange on WTO dispute settlement reform:
Reinsch:
This [question] comes from our old friend Gary Horlick. What changes will the EU seek in WTO dispute settlement while maintaining a neutral binding mechanism?
Weyand:
... What we are looking is to ensure the effectiveness and efficiency of the whole dispute settlement. So we want to get back a second step in the process, an appeal process. That is essential for us. But we also need to look at the efficiency of the panel stage. We also need to look at the quality of the panelists and of the arbitrators. And then I think we will have to see, and ... I cannot prejudge that, because we are currently engaged in a process that the US has launched in Geneva, which is to say, okay, what are the interests of the membership in the reform of the dispute settlement system. We are not going to cut that short. This will continue into the autumn and then we will move into the phase of looking at possible solutions. So we are open here to address concerns of the US, some of which, or a lot of which, we actually share, and we have set that out in great detail in a communication in early 2021. So I think that overall assessment is still there. And then we have to find a way that the membership is comfortable with this sort of dispute settlement process.
...
We need to look also at a situation where we revive the negotiating capacity of the WTO so that we can reassure Members like the US, who feel that the dispute settlement has encroached on Members' ability to shape the rules by engaging in gap filling. So I think we need to give reassurances in that.
So we are willing to work with the US across this whole space, and with other partners across this whole spectrum. I think we have in the meantime set up the Multi Party Interim Arrangement, MPIA, in order to make sure that we can get to final arbitrations of disputes. And I think the success that that has, but also the discussions we've had in the run up to MC12, show that the membership in general is very much attached to an effective independent neutral dispute settlement mechanism with two stages.
