Director General

The Director-General of the WTO is elected by its membership to manage the daily work of the organization. With the ex officio appointment of the DG as Chairperson of the TNC, the DG plays an active role in the Doha negotiations.

As chair of the TNC, the DG has the power to set the agenda of meetings and conduct his own consultations. The current DG, Pascal Lamy, has used these powers to influence the path of the negotiations and steer the process. The Doha Round of negotiations has been stalled many times by membersХ open disagreement over specific negotiating proposals. Against this background, the DG took an active role in keeping the members engaged and bringing the negotiating process back on track, conducting his own consultations in Geneva and other international fora, such as the G20 and the World Economic Forum in Davos, to get a buy-in at the highest political level. In several instances, he also suggested new negotiating approaches and meeting schedules. Following the Ministerial Conference in 2009 (Geneva), for example, he suggested the adoption of a high-level involvement approach that built on the presence of Government representatives at the ministerial level at meetings of the negotiating bodies. At the end of 2009, he suggested to seek progress in the negotiations by using a Тcocktail approachУ: a negotiating approach that mixes different negotiating formats and meant that Т[Й] every configuration and every possibility for progress must be exploited to the fullest, whether it is small groups, bilateral contacts, negotiating groups or my own consultations [Й]У. [27]

Дата добавления: 2015-07-20