101. The representative of Argentina associated her delegation with the view expressed by Australia, Canada and the United States that the mandate under Article 23.4 of the TRIPS Agreement instructed the negotiation of a voluntary system. She said that the European Communities' attempt to accommodate the word "multilateral" and the notion of "Members participating in the system" by explaining that under its proposal fewer legal effects would be given with regard to non-participating Members showed how difficult it was to reconcile what was given under Article 23.4 of the Agreement with the EC proposal. In fact, what the EC proposal was doing was to assimilate the concept of "participation" with that of "notification" by saying that a non-participant was a Member which did not notify. This was not the understanding of the joint proposal group, according to which only those who participate would notify since through this voluntary act they gave their consent to certain rights and obligations. She disagreed with the European Communities that the notion that all Members should participate emerged from the concept that WTO Members had the general obligation to protect the intellectual property rights of other Members' nationals. This was contradicted by Article 23 of the TRIPS Agreement, which contained no strong obligation to afford protection and only stated that each Member should provide the legal means for interested parties to prevent certain uses of geographical indications. So, it was obvious that the differences of positions in this Special Session resided not only in relation to the mandate under 23.4 of the Agreement, but also in relation to what the TRIPS Agreement provided in the GI area. Therefore, what the European Communities was seeking was not provided under the TRIPS Agreement, namely direct protection.
