48. The representative of Australia said that the discussion on participation was a fundamental issue. His perception about the principal demandeurs was that they had taken their "sheep's clothes off" and indicated that they wanted, whatever was agreed upon in the Special Session, the multilateral register to apply to all other products. In light of that, one could not easily separate the two issues nor accuse the Australian delegation of trying to distract the negotiations by referring to the issues. In his view, the current debate was all about "capturing the hearts" of the majority of WTO Members who would not wish to participate in the system for wines and spirits because they did not have an interest in wines and spirits. Therefore, the objective pursued by both sides was to try and convince the rest of the membership about the sort of register they might be interested in and whether or not this register should be such that they would be obliged to join. The example of "Tokay" was meant to be an example of one issue in the wines area that could lead to considerable discussion between some dozen delegations. The reason why he had come up with such questions was because he had in mind certain regions of the world like Asia, where for instance China, Korea and Japan were using terms which sometimes were similar, or Latin America, where some terms used were identical or similar. Therefore, the "Tokay" example was only one which could be repeated many times over, not only in the discussions on wines and spirits, but also in discussions on handicrafts, foods and other products. For this reason, it was important to discuss participation because in the area of wines and spirits, it was easier.
49. Turning to the EC statement on costs in relation to the Lisbon Agreement, he wondered how the Special Session should take account of an agreement which had only 20 contracting parties out of a total of 179 members. He reminded delegations that 94.3% of the registrations of appellations of origin had come from the EU or countries applying for accession to the EU. In other words, the EU had a very regulated centralized system of GIs and appellations of origin, which it tried to extend as a model to the rest of the world. It was not surprising that the costs of registration under the Lisbon Agreement were small because 94.3% of the registrations came from countries who worked with that model every day. WTO Members should not be deceived when it came to a multilateral register of wines and spirits, foods, handicrafts and manufactured products, because the cost for all of those Members who were contemplating joining the system would be more significant.
