FES Geneva Fact Sheet April 2009 vestment Regimes; Trade Policies and Practices by Measure; and Trade Policies by Sector. The“Gov­ernment Report” is an official policy statement of approximately 15 pages. It explains the recent developments in and general objectives of the country´s trade policy and sometimes identifies the country’s trade-related assistance needs. The TPR meetings are organized by the Trade Poli­cy Review Body(TPRB) and are open to all WTO Members, but not to civil society organizations. The official reports, together with the proceedings of the discussion, are published a few weeks af­terwards at WTO’s website. Recent reforms The second chapter of the“Secretariat Report” usually contains a section on“Trade-related Tech­nical Assistance”. In 2008, this part was restruc­tured and renamed as“Aid for Trade”. It indicates the amount and type of trade-related develop­ment assistance that the respective country re­ceived and/or provided. Moreover, it identifies further needs for technical assistance in the case of developing countries. A second reform was decided upon as reaction to the financial and economic crisis. WTO Director­General, Pascal Lamy, established a“specific mon­itoring mechanism to track, review and discuss trade policy developments during the crisis.” 2 The WTO Secretariat already produced two reports in January and March on the financial and economic crisis and trade-related developments, which sub­sequently were discussed at the TPRB. 3 While this practice will be continued, it is unclear if future TPRs will include an explicit assessment on wheth­er or not and what kind of protectionist measures the respective country applied. Reflections and suggestions The TPRM has proven a useful instrument to mon­itor WTO member countries’ trade policies, and the level of transparency has increased significant­ly. Apart from its main objectives, the TPRM fulfills three other valuable functions, which should be further developed: 2 Lamy, Pascal:„Keeping trade open: Resisting isola­tionism“, Speech delivered in Seoul, Korea(23 Feb­ruary 2009), http://www.wto.org/english/news_e/sppl_e/sppl115_ e.htm(consulted on 16 April 2009). 3 See WTO, JOB(09)/30, 26 March 2009, at: http://www.wto.org/english/news_e/news09_e/trdev _dg_report_14apr09_e.doc(consulted on 16 April 2009). First, it promotes inter-agency cooperation, mainly between the WTO, IMF and World Bank. It should include to a greater extend the expertise of UN organizations, such as UNCTAD, the ILO and oth­ers as far as their respective mandates and work­ing areas are touched upon. This would improve the coherence of international and national policy­making. On the other hand, TPRs could serve as reference for other periodic country reviews, such as those undertaken by the UN Committee on Ec­onomic, Social and Cultural Rights or the Universal Periodic Review of the Human Rights Council. Second, it turned out to be a technical coopera­tion measure for developing countries; those WTO Members that lack the necessary trade analysis capacity are assisted during the TPR preparation process. Such activities should be opened up for civil society. This would enhance the understand­ing of trade and trade-related issues in general. Third, the TPRM occasionally served as a forum to discuss the impacts of trade on sustainable devel­opment and other“non-trade” issues. During China’s last TPR in 2008, for instance, interactions between trade and exchange rates, the environ­ment or even income inequality were addressed. However, the request of the International Trade Union Confederation(ITUC) to include a section on the implications of trade on core labour stan­dards and decent work has not been taken up yet. Thus, ITUC has been producing parallel re­ports on the countries under review. 4 All future TPRs should contain a sub-chapter on the impacts of trade on sustainable development. Finally, to increase the transparency of the process, civil society should be allowed to attend presentations at the WTO or, even better, be con­sulted in the preparation phase. This is already the case for country reviews at the UN and has helped to trigger a nationwide dialogue on the respective policy areas. It would expand the understanding of the costs and benefits of a country’s WTO membership among the broader population. In the long term, this could facilitate trade negotia­tions, such as of the protracted Doha Round. Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Geneva Office, Steffen Grammling, Program Officer(Trade and Development), sgrammling@fes-geneva.org 4 For a list of ITUC country reports since 2007, see: http://www.ituc-csi.org/spip.php?rubrique161(con­sulted on 16 April 2009). 2