Minutes - TRIPS Council - View details of the intervention/statement

Ambassador Choi Hyuck (Korea)
I NON-VIOLATION AND SITUATION COMPLAINTS
222. The Chairman recalled that paragraph 1(h) of the General Council Decision of 1 August 2004 on "Other elements of the Work Programme" provided, inter alia, that the General Council and other relevant bodies should report on their work on such other elements in line with their Doha mandates to the Sixth Ministerial Conference. It also provided that the moratorium on non-violation and situation complaints covered by paragraph 11.1 of the Doha Ministerial Decision on Implementation-Related Issues and Concerns was extended up to the Sixth Ministerial Conference. This matter had been on the agenda of the Council's last two meetings. At those meetings, the Council had discussed the matter on the basis of, inter alia, an updated Secretariat summary note on the points raised in the Council's substantive discussion of this matter so far (IP/C/W/349/Rev.1). Given that the present meeting was the Council's last meeting before the Hong Kong Ministerial Conference, it was now necessary to consider what kind of recommendations they could provide to the Ministerial Conference. 223. He further recalled that he had taken that matter up at the Council's informal meetings on 20 and 25 October. In order to facilitate the consideration of the matter, he had noted that there appeared to be three main options for such recommendations. At one end of the spectrum, one option would be to follow the proposal by a number of Members contained in document IP/C/W/385, and to recommend to Ministers that violations of the type identified in Article XXIII.1(b) and (c) of GATT 1994 be determined inapplicable to the TRIPS Agreement. At the other end of the spectrum was the option of non-violation and situation complaints being available under the TRIPS Agreement without subjecting them to any specific guidance as to their scope and modalities over and above those already envisaged by the DSU, i.e. the general safeguards provided in Article 26 of the DSU. The third option would be to recommend that the moratorium be further extended so as to allow the TRIPS Council more time to consider the scope and modalities of non-violation and situation complaints in the area of TRIPS. If the Council were to follow this option, it should consider the length of any such further extension, i.e. whether it should be extended until the conclusion of the Round, or whether the timing should be determined in some other way. In principle, there would be a fourth option, namely that the Council would recommend that non-violation and situation complaints be made available to disputes arising under the TRIPS Agreement, but made subject to some specific additional guidance on their scope and modalities. However, no proposals for such provisions had been submitted.
IP/C/M/49