French President Emmanuel Macron suggested speeding up the work of the European Union and China on the transformation of the World Trade Organization (WTO). He declares: “It is necessary to accelerate the work done by China and the European Union on the modernization of the WTO to be able to better tackle as partners the issues of transparency, excessive production capacity, and state subsidies.”
The French President is convinced that such cooperation brings many advantages and helps set aside the differences. Macron added that all sides benefited a way more from openness. He also remarked: “The cooperation between Europe and China should give a positive result, in particular, regarding a global agreement on investment.”
Earlier it was reported that the European Union and 11 WTO countries (Australia, Canada, China, Iceland, India, Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore and Switzerland) made proposals to reform the organization to ameliorate its further work.
One of the proposals was the introduction of amendments to WTO rules in order to soothe the concerns of the United States. This country has prevented appointments to the vacant positions in the appellate body for more than a year and a half, highlighting a number of worries. WTO representatives offer to introduce a number of rules to address these problems. For example, it is proposed to include in WTO rules a text focusing the appellate body's attention only on those issues that are required for dispute resolution.
