35. The representative of Argentina said that for her delegation it was clear from Article 24.1 that no Members needed to enter into bilateral negotiations with any other Member to grant or obtain protection or to enable domestic producers to initiate legal proceedings at the national level. She asked the representative of the European Communities to give a clarification: if currently an Argentine producer or the Argentine Government wanted to enforce an exception under Article 24.4 before a court, should Argentina enter into negotiations with the WTO Member concerned by the exception prior to alleging that exception in its favour at the national level?
36. With regard to the bilateral agreement between Canada and the European Communities, the fact that Canada had to examine some 8,000 names before arriving at 1,500 names was a waste of time, money and human resources. In this regard, she said that only developed countries like Canada could afford such examination within a certain lapse of time. If a multilateral registration system like the one proposed by the European Communities were imposed, then every Member would have 18 months to examine a large number of terms with already 10,000 terms simply from the European Communities.
37. Her delegation did not believe that GIs protection facilitated mutual trade, since this was often done by reducing customs tariff and non-tariff barriers, like sanitary and technical barriers. She said that the national GI systems of some EC member States having created a technical barrier to trade within the European Communities, they had been expanded to the Community level to overcome such barrier. This was now being amplified to a global level.
