39. The representative of Australia said that the words "in those Members participating in the system" in Article 23.4 of the TRIPS Agreement meant that the system must be voluntary, in other words there could be Members not participating in the system. For this reason the multilateral system put forward in the joint proposal was entirely voluntary and would not impose any legal effects in non-participating Members although it allowed them to have access to the system. By contrast, the EC proposal did not appear to be voluntary at all, given the provision entitled "legal effects in non-participating Members", which would force those Members to lodge reservations in order to retain their rights to rely on certain exceptions that all Members were currently entitled to enjoy under Article 24 of the TRIPS Agreement. He further said that paragraph 1 of the EC proposal appeared to be misleading in light of its paragraph 5. For his delegation, there was no genuine choice in that proposal to participate or not to participate: there was in fact only a choice to not participate in the benefits, but no choice to not participate in the obligations.
