The Governing Council of the Inter-Parliamentary Union,

Recognizing the unique character of the World Trade Organization (WTO) as an intergovernmental rules-setting body, whose importance extends beyond the sphere of international trade per se,

Convinced that the exceptional powers of the WTO should be matched by equally high standards in terms of its transparency and accountability, and that parliamentarians, as legitimate representatives of the people, are best placed to oversee government action in the field of multilateral trade negotiations,

Expressing satisfaction that, after a relatively short initial set-up period, the Parliamentary Conference on the WTO, driven jointly by the IPU and the European Parliament, acquired all the necessary requisites of a permanent and appropriately structured process that serves as a de facto parliamentary dimension of the WTO,

Recognizing at the same time that the Parliamentary Conference on the WTO operates in a juridical vacuum vis-à-vis the WTO, whose internal rules and regulations currently make no mention of parliaments and foresee no specific role for parliamentarians,

Concerned that some members of parliaments participating in sessions of the Parliamentary Conference on the WTO held in conjunction with WTO Ministerial Conferences have no access to the Ministerial Conference, which undermines their ability to oversee trade negotiations,

1. Urges governments of all WTO Member States to include, as a matter of rule, parliamentarians specializing in questions of international trade in official national delegations to WTO Ministerial Conferences;

2. Invites the WTO General Council to consider adding "Parliamentary Conference on the WTO" (PC WTO) as a separate category of observers to Ministerial Conferences, it being understood that the overall number of persons falling into this category normally does not exceed 200 and that their rights of physical entry to the premises of Ministerial Conferences should be assimilated to those of NGOs;

3. Calls on the WTO General Council to include in the internal WTO rules and regulations a reference to the Parliamentary Conference on the WTO as a permanent mechanism of parliamentary oversight of and interaction with the WTO.

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   Note: you can download a complete electronic version of the brochure "Results of the 114th Assembly and related meetings of the Inter-Parliamentary Union" in PDF format (file size approximately 503K). This version requires Adobe Acrobat Reader, which you can download free of charge.

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