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

Ambassador Eui-yong Chung (Korea, Republic of)
D ORGANIZATION OF WORK
32. The representative of Argentina thanked the United States for its two documents. Her delegation thought that the list of issues was a good starting-point for the Special Session's work. With regard to some other points concerning the development of these negotiations, she said that Argentina had been an active participant in the negotiations that had taken place so far on a multilateral system of notification and registration of geographical indications for wines and spirits. Argentina intended to continue to work constructively. As for the parameters that should characterize this system, the procedures should be designed to facilitate protection without generating new obligations that could be an obstacle to the circulation of products that were the subject of protection. It was important for Argentina that the registration be voluntary, be based on Article 22.1 and be transparent. With regard to future work, it believed that, based on the Doha mandate, the work of the Special Session could be more focused. Issues that were outside the Doha mandate should also be outside these negotiations. The Special Session should respect the deadlines and come up with a negotiated agreement by the Fifth Ministerial Conference. Argentina had already indicated in the past that if the negotiating process had not significantly progressed, it was precisely because of the interference created by incorporating issues other than those relating to Article 23. 33. She said that Argentina had maintained that Article 23.4 provided that there should be negotiations for the establishment of a multilateral system of notification and registration of geographical indications for wines. Ministers in Doha had adopted a political decision that, in addition to the system provided for under Article 23.4 for wines, there should be a notification and registration system in the area of spirits. For Argentina, at a certain stage, whether in the list of issues or during the negotiations, the Special Session would have to provide for the modalities under which the new obligation to establish a register of geographical indications for spirits would be incorporated into the TRIPS Agreement. Such incorporation would mean that the obligation to provide for a register in the field of spirits would have the same status as other obligations deriving from the Agreement, once the negotiations had been finalized. The text signed after the Uruguay Round was not a political declaration but was a binding treaty ratified by parliaments, and, in the case of Argentina, incorporated into the national legislation. Argentina therefore raised, as a systemic concern, the question of the need for political decisions to be incorporated into the TRIPS Agreement in order to be legally binding.
TN/IP/M/1