Last chance negotiations continued on Thursday at the WTO to try to achieve a consensus on anti-Covid vaccines, fishing and food security, but also to give the organization a second wind in a destabilized multilateral trading system. .

With a touch of humour, the World Trade Organization tweeted around 07:40 GMT: “Good morning on this fifth day of our four-day #MC12 (12th Ministerial Conference Editor’s note)”. Delegates have worked through the night and negotiations are continuing this morning.”

The meeting between the 164 member countries of the World Trade Organization – the first in more than 4 years – has already been extended until Thursday 13:00 GMT in the hope of snatching agreements on anti-Covid vaccines, fishing or food security.

The ministers, meeting in Geneva since Sunday, haggled all night at the headquarters of the organization.

“Hello from the WTO!” launched the US Trade Representative, Katherine Tai, in a very early morning tweet, accompanied by a photo where we can see the first rays of the sun illuminating Lake Geneva. A similar photo posted almost at the same time by British Ambassador Simon Manley, in a poetic tweet: “We were there at dawn, when the night turns into early morning”.

But nothing filtered through on a possible agreement on fishing and anti-Covid vaccines, the two key topics of the meeting.

“We remain optimistic that we can achieve really positive results,” Damien O’Connor, New Zealand’s trade minister, told AFP, without however wanting to go into details.

Nothing is guaranteed because decisions are made by consensus and a single dissonance can derail an agreement.

Many diplomats have deplored in recent days India’s strong reluctance on several of the texts, including on subsidies that contribute to overfishing and the extension of the moratorium on customs duties for electronic transmissions.

Coax India

“India has always been a reluctant trading partner. India is notorious for its reluctance to sign free trade agreements,” Harsh V. Pant, a professor at King’s College London, told AFP.

“India now feels it has more room to maneuver than in the past. It (…) thinks it is in a favorable geopolitical situation that everyone wants to coax it into, and she can use it as leverage,” the New Delhi-based international policy expert noted.

The country had already been accused by NGOs of having prevented the conclusion of the fisheries agreement during the previous WTO ministerial at the end of 2017 in Buenos Aires.

WTO members are meeting until Thursday in Geneva for the 12th ministerial conference of the organization, which has not concluded a major agreement since the 2013 ministerial conference in Bali.

Arrived in March 2021 at the head of the WTO, the Nigerian Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the first woman and first African to lead this organization created in 1995, promised to give it back its role on the international scene, in particular in the face of the pandemic. of Covid-19.

On this subject, a first text under discussion aims to facilitate the trade of medical goods necessary for the fight against pandemics, while a second text – of greater scope – calls for the temporary lifting of patents on anti-Covid vaccines.

The serious global food crisis caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which is one of the world’s breadbaskets, is at the heart of the concerns of ministers at the WTO. A statement is discussed on export restrictions.

Another draft agreement aims to ban export restrictions on purchases by the World Food Programme, one of the UN’s main humanitarian agencies. But this negotiation was blocked until then by India.

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