83. The representative of Chile reiterated his delegation's support for the joint proposal and for the statements made by other co-sponsors of the proposal, in particular that of Costa Rica. As his delegation had received the EC paper only a few days ago, and only in English, analysing it would take more time. His delegation also requested that the proposal be put in the form of a legal text, as was the case with the joint proposal or with the EC's proposal of 2005. That would make it easier to compare and analyse the different proposals. As Chile had stated at the last meeting, the supporters of TN/C/W/52 had reached agreement on these four simple paragraphs close to a year ago. Thus, the 108 Members who had signed the proposal should now be able to reach an agreement and come out with a more elaborated text.
84. He recognized that there had been an improvement and movement on the EC side, but that was simply because the EC's initial position had been so extreme that it had been easy for it to move. The same comment applied to Switzerland, who had also referred to Hungary's proposal, when it said that it had moved several times.
85. He had been surprised to hear that the EC had claimed its proposal to be the only one containing special and differential treatment provisions. He reiterated that the joint proposal provided for voluntary participation, which was the best form of S&D that any WTO Member could enjoy. His delegation believed that the EC proposal would involve considerable costs, particularly for developing countries. It had already been raised in previous meetings that for Chile, which was not party to the Lisbon Agreement, obtaining oppositions by some Lisbon members to the registration – by another country party to the Lisbon Agreement – of a geographical indication to which Chile considered to be entitled, had involved huge financial and human resources. Furthermore, this effort to protect Chile's rights, which were finally recognized by the Lisbon Agreement members, had only been successful three days before the time-limit expired. This experience showed how difficult it was to apply rules that were already 40 years old, and that was the reason why those members would initiate a process of revising the text of the Lisbon Agreement. Against that background his delegation considered it important to define the concepts contained in the EC proposal. While he agreed with Brazil that it was not a good idea to define every term, he believed that the current proposal was bad for Members as it was too vague.
