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

Ambassador Carmen Luz Guarda (Chile)
C.iv Future review
24. The Chairperson recalled that she had informed Members at the Council's meeting in May that she had initiated consultations with a number of individual delegations whose legislation was not subject to the review of national implementing legislation in 1996/1997 but whose legislation had already been, in whole or in part, brought into conformity with the TRIPS Agreement. As agreed by the Council last November, such consultations were being held in order to see the scope for the legislation of such Members to be progressively incorporated into the review process by the Council after the present review programme, i.e. at the earliest in 1998. Such an early review would be without prejudice to the legal situation regarding these Members' entitlements under Article 65 and would be intended as a practical contribution, on a voluntary basis, to the work of the Council, in particular to even out its future workload. In this regard, she had also been in contact with the delegations of Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and the Slovak Republic, who were subject to the current review exercise but whose legislation would not have been fully reviewed by the end of this year, because they had joined the exercise late. She had held these consultations with individual Members on the basis that the Council might include an item on the review of national legislation at two of its regular meetings in 1998, one in the spring and the other in the autumn. At the first of these meetings, the Council might complete its review of the legislation of Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and the Slovak Republic, which countries had joined the current review exercise after it had started. At that time, the legislation of Mongolia, which had acceded to the WTO without a transitional period for the application of the provisions of the TRIPS Agreement, would also be taken up, if the translations of the Mongolian implementing legislation would have been finalized and made available to Members in time. As regards the autumn of 1998, she was consulting with a number of individual Members on whether and to what extent they would be prepared to subject their legislation to an early review, without prejudice to their entitlements under Article 65 and on a voluntary basis. Her impressions from these consultations were such that she had good hope that several Members would indeed be ready to participate in such an early review exercise.
IP/C/M/14