12. The representative of the European Communities emphasized the importance of the parallelism between substantive obligations and notifications of the laws and regulations which implemented these substantive obligations. Notifications of implementing legislation relating to the MFN and national treatment obligations under Articles 3, 4 and 5 of the TRIPS Agreement needed to be submitted to the Council as soon as possible and in an as transparent a way as possible. He said that implementation of these obligations could, in some instances, be effected through one specific provision in a given law, in which case notification would not seem to pose tremendous problems, but recognized that this could be more difficult in other instances. One way of dealing with difficulties which Members might face in this regard was to proceed as proposed by the United States. His delegation was prepared to go along with that approach. Another question that the Council still had to consider in this regard was how it would go about reviewing notifications relating to Articles 3, 4 and 5.
