The World Trade Organization has attempted over the years to improve its transparency both for the benefit of Members and for the needs of the public in many countries with active interests in the issues being discussed within the WTO. Because the WTO is a member driven organization, there has been a long standing tension between the desire of some for greater transparency and the unwillingness of others to make their submissions available to the public.
Back in 2010, I wrote a trade flow for my law firm which reviewed how the WTO was failing to honor the objectives of greater transparency through the wholesale adoption of a category of documents labeled “JOB” which largely were not made available ever for public review. Nine years later, there has been some improvement and some backsliding in transparency at the WTO.
JOB documents are not the only documents hidden from view in many situations. There is a category of documents called “room documents” (“RD”) that similarly are never released for public review. The classification of documents as JOB documents (or as other unavailable types) is a matter of self-selection by the WTO Member submitting the document and can lead to essentially irrational differences. For example, during the WTO Doha negotiations, the chairs of all negotiating groups except dispute settlement released draft negotiating texts as public documents, and many/most/all of the submissions by members of positions, etc. were also available to the public. For many years, the dispute settlement negotiation group was alone in not releasing the draft text or many of the negotiating proposals.
Similarly, the resort to “informal meetings” means that there are no minutes of the meeting that are kept or released to the public after some period of delay. Looking at the Fishery subsidy negotiations, many documents of submissions by parties are available, but there are no minutes for the many informal meetings, just very abbreviated “summaries” provided.
When there is an inconsistent approach to the treatment of similar documents or when there is movement from formal to informal with a loss of transparency, the public loses and there can be a dimunition in trust of how the WTO is functioning.
Look at the area of agriculture negotiations. There are 202 documents that are shown in the WTO document system with a “JOB/AG” number (these include corrections or revisions) going back to July 1, 2010. Before that time, JOB documents were not broken out by area or typically listed but would occasionally be referenced in statements by the Director General or in Committee reports. Of the 202 JOB/AG documents listed on the WTO document file, 141 are not available to the public. Many of the public documents date from 2017 but there are documents in the last three years that are also not public even if earlier documents of a similar nature were public. For example, JOB/AG/163 is a Report of the Chairman of the Committee on Agriculture in Special Session (31 July 2019) and is not public. Yet another report by the same Chairman from 12 days earlier is public (JOB/AG/162). Moreover, to the extent types of documents are now treated as public, there is no system for going back and correcting classification of earlier submissions. And for categories like room documents there is no system for ever making such documents public.
Despite some progress in the first twenty-five years, the WTO has a lot of room for improvement in ensuring that the public can monitor and understand developments in all areas of its operation. WTO Members need to develop more consistent policies on how they treat their own submissions and work with trading partners to maximize transparency.
Below is a trade flow I posted on my law firm’s website on May 12, 2010:
Opening Up the World Trade Organization: How the Promise of Greater Transparency Has Been Compromised By the Wholesale Use of “JOB” Documents
The World Trade Organization (“WTO”) is an intergovernmental organization that came into existence in 1995. Its predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (“GATT”), had received relatively little notice and operated largely out of public view. However, the growing importance globally of trade, the expansion of rules to areas traditionally viewed as domestic in nature, and a dispute settlement system that was more binding on participants all increased the pressure on the WTO to improve its transparency to the public.
Indeed, when the U.S. Congress was considering implementing the Uruguay Round Agreements that created the WTO into U.S. law, increasing the transparency of the new organization was of great importance. This is reflected in section 126 of the URAA and the House Report and Statement of Administrative Action on the section:
Sec. 126. Increased Transparency
The Trade Representative shall seek the adoption by the Ministerial Conference and General Council of procedures that will ensure broader application of the principle of transparency and clarification of the costs and benefits of trade policy actions, through the observance of open and equitable procedures in trade matters by the Ministerial Conference and the General Council, and by the dispute settlement panels and the Appellate Body under the Dispute Settlement Understanding.
19 U.S.C. § 3536. House Rep. No. 103-826(I) at 35 (1994):
Section 126. Increased transparency
Present law.
No provision.
Explanation of provision
Section 126 of H.R. 5110 directs the USTR to seek adoption by the functional bodies of the WTO of procedures that will ensure broader application of the principle of transparency.
Reasons for change
Through the adoption of more open and equitable procedures, it is the intention of the United States to improve our ability to assess the costs and benefits of WTO trade policy actions. Members have been concerned, particularly with respect to dispute settlement panels and the Appellate Body, that closed meetings and the lack of public availability of documents upon which decisions are based serve to undermine confidence in the decisions of these functional bodies.
Although it is more traditional in international bodies to conduct meetings and make decisions behind closed doors, the Committee believes that the WTO will gain more respect and build confidence if they follow the U.S. experience of providing more open access to the public with respect to key policy or dispute-settlement determinations. It has become a high priority for the U.S. to persuade other member nations of the WTO to work with us to open the process, provide greater access, provide for voices of dissent and differing views to be heard, and in general make the WTO more accountable to those who are affected by international decision-making.
See also Statement of Administrative Action accompanying the Uruguay Round Agreements Act, H.R. Rep. No. 103-316, 103d Cong., 2d Sess., vol. I, 678-679 (1994).
The United States was not the only country interested in greater transparency, and the WTO early on did adopt a number of steps to improve transparency. One such step was the creation of a broader system for derestricting documents so there would be greater public awareness of issues. See, e.g., WT/L/160/Rev.1 (26 July 1996) (procedures for the circulation and derestriction of WTO documents); WT/L/452 (16 May 2002).
While WTO meetings generally have not been opened to the public, there has been movement, where disputing parties consent, to open at least some dispute settlement meetings and hearings to public viewing. The WTO has also done some outreach to the public through formal meeting days in Geneva, the opportunity to submit comments on their webpage, improved access to the public portion of ministerial meetings, briefings on ministerials, and other events, and through other means. So the WTO can fairly be said to be more transparent than its predecessor, the GATT. Although many countries continue to have concerns about increased transparency, there are various proposals being considered as part of the ongoing Doha Round — both within the review of the dispute settlement system and in the Rules negotiations — for additional steps to increase transparency.
But there is one growing problem, in particular, within the WTO that undermines at least some of the progress made in increased transparency that is neither necessary nor, in this author’s view, desirable. It is the growing presence of “JOB” documents within the system. Under the WTO classification system, documents which are given a “JOB” number do not become part of the “official WTO documents” and hence escape either categorization, listing, or derestriction to the public. Indeed, members of the public only know such documents exist because they are referenced in official documents that are public. Whatever the merits of having documents that are never derestricted, the “JOB” classification is a matter of self-selection, resulting in situations impossible for the public to comprehend. Thus, a chairman’s draft text [JOB(08)/81 of July 2008] in the dispute settlement negotiations is not available to the public (though it is referenced in the Chairman’s report to the Trade Negotiations Committee, TN/DS/24 (22 March 2010)), while chairmen’s draft texts are available publicly in agriculture, non-agricultural market access, Rules and other areas. What is the logic of this differential treatment of chairmen’s texts? There is no obvious answer.
Similarly, in an area like “trade and environment,” some proposals from WTO Members are public while others – including from the United States — are “JOB” documents and not publicly available. See TN/TE/19 note 19 listing JOB(09)/132 (Canada; European Communities; Japan; Korea; New Zealand; Norway; Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu; Switzerland and United States) (9 Oct. 2009); JOB(09)/169 and Add.1 (Saudi Arabia (6 Nov. 2009 and 15 Dec. 2009); TN/TE/W/75 and Add. 1 (Japan, 27 Nov. 2009 and 16 Feb. 2010) and JOB/TE/2 (Philippines (16 Feb. 2010). For years, one couldn’t find a public summarization of the competing lists of goods and services that would potentially qualify as environmental for the Doha negotiations, although such summaries are now part of the annual reports. See TN/TE/19 Annex III. Why is this permitted? How can Members square such actions with activity in areas like Rules where all papers have been made public or like agriculture where virtually every country has public submissions?
The problem exists within the Secretariat, which routinely marks summaries as JOB documents. The problem extends to the Director General, who frequently references in his comments to the General Council or Trade Negotiations Committee one or more JOB documents (e.g., TN/C/M/29 at 2 (referring to JOB(08/132)). Indeed, the problem exists for all Members, including the strongest advocates of increased transparency like the United States.
The public has no idea how many documents are so marked. Just from the numbers on some of the JOB documents referenced in other public documents, it appears there may be literally thousands of documents a year that avoid public disclosure or scrutiny. In addition, the public cannot find a listing of all such documents to be able to at least understand what was submitted even if it is not made public. Historically in the GATT days, the public could reference an index of documents with full titles even if the document was restricted and not publicly available. Why should the WTO permit such a retreat from public dissemination of basic information? Why should the public, increasingly affected by actions of the WTO, accept this state of affairs? Are there steps that can be taken to drastically reduce if not eliminate this practice? Why shouldn’t JOB documents that do exist be derestricted just like all “official” documents?
The answers would seem obvious. For many in the public, there is no justification for the secrecy and “black box” approach to the creation or maintenance of “JOB” documents. Thus, the best course of action would be to eliminate the use of such categories and require all documents circulated to members to be part of the WTO document collection and subject to derestriction rules. At a bare minimum, the WTO and its Members should circumscribe which type of documents can legitimately be claimed as such, require prior JOB documents to be reclassified if they don’t meet the criteria, provide a public catalogue of all existing and future “JOB” documents, and determine why a derestriction process should not be applied.
Under the current approach, the WTO and the WTO membership permit entire topics to disappear from public view. Such an outcome is not acceptable to many Members. It should be corrected for the good of the system and to honor the public’s right to know what is being discussed by the Members in the WTO. Correction doesn’t require the completion of a round. It just requires common sense and the will to keep the promises to make the organization more transparent and more accountable to the people of the world.