38. In response to a question from the representative of the European Communities, the representative of the Secretariat explained that the Secretariat had not been able to finalize its summary overview of the responses to the Council's Checklist due to resource problems, which had prevented it from meeting the considerable task of completing the paper in question on the basis of the detailed outline that had been agreed by the Council. The Intellectual Property Division of the Secretariat had been short-staffed over the past months, precisely at a time that it had had to service four active panels. He apologized for the delay and expected the paper to be available, at least in English, several weeks before the next meeting but noted that translation was beyond his control.
