December 2009/N°7 The Seventh WTO Ministerial Conference: a“housekeeping” exercise Steffen Grammling According to the rules of the World Trade Organi­zation(WTO), Ministerial Conferences should be convened every two years. Since 2005, however, no such meeting had been held due to the slow progress in the Doha Round of trade negotiations. Calls for a Ministerial were getting louder and the WTO General Council finally decided to convoke a “regular” Ministerial Conference from 30 No­vember to 2 December in Geneva. This implied that the Doha Round negotiations were delibe­rately left aside, making the Ministerial the first one that was not directly related to trade bargain­ing. One observer commented:“If you cannot solve the real issue, you move to wider subjects.” The main objective of the Seventh WTO Ministeri­al Conference was to allow Ministers to discuss, review, and provide guidance on all WTO activi­ties. Thus, the Conference was given the broad title“The WTO, the Multilateral Trading System and the Current Global Economic Environment”. It brought together nearly 3000 representatives from all 153 WTO Members, 56 Observers, and numerous civil society organizations. The Conference was designed as a“non-event” and it turned out to be one. WTO Director­General Pascal Lamy noted in his Web-Conference Blog:“Members of the WTO wanted a‘normal’ ministerial – they've had one.” 1 No major deci­sions were taken, no major surprises occurred, and no major demonstrations disturbed the meet­ing. Unfortunately, the opportunity to use the “time-out” in the Doha Round to seriously discuss the future of the WTO and to strengthen and reform the institutional settings was missed. 1 See Pascal Lamy’s Ministerial Conference Blog at: http://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/minist_e/min09 _e/blog_e.htm(consulted on 9 December 2009). The proceedings of the Conference The Chair of the Conference, Chile’s Finance Mi­nister Andrés Velasco, opened the Ministerial, followed by WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy, who reminded of the Chinese proverb“Zhong Zhi Cheng Cheng”, which means“Unity is Strength”. This became in a way the motto of the whole meeting, which fastidiously tried to avoid any possible conflict. Supachai Panitchpakdi, Secre­tary-General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development(UNCTAD), spoke on behalf of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, fol­lowed by Francis Gurry, Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organization(WIPO) and Patricia Francis, Executive Director of the In­ternational Trade Center(ITC). After the opening session and throughout the subsequent days, almost 100 trade ministers read out their three minutes statements in the ple­num. 2 Interestingly, the European Commission appeared for the first time as“European Union” (EU) instead of“European Communities”. This was one of the reforms brought about by the Lis­bon Treaty that came into force on 1 December. In parallel to the plenum, two working sessions took place. The first session on 1 December was entitled“Review of WTO activities, including the Doha Work Programme” and dealt with the is­sues of the Doha Round, Regional Trade Agree­ments, Aid for Trade, and Accessions. The second session on 2 December was entitled“The WTO’s contribution to recovery, growth and develop­ment“, at which Members mainly reaffirmed the 2 Most of the statements are available at: http://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/minist_e/min09 _e/min09_statements_e.htm(consulted on 9 Decem­ber 2009).