REPORT BY THE SECRETARIAT[1]

1  BACKGROUND

1.1.  On 7 July 2025, the Council for Trade in Goods (CTG, or the Council) adopted a Decision on the Recording of the Resolution of Trade Concerns (_G/L/1578) (the Decision), which instructs the Secretariat to maintain a categorized record of all trade concerns raised in the Council.

1.2.  Paragraph 3 of the Decision provides that, based on information provided by Members, trade concerns should be listed as falling within one of the following two categories:

a._         Resolved: when all the Members that have raised the trade concern in any of the Council meetings, and the responding Member(s), report it to the Secretariat as resolved;

b._         Partially resolved: if some, but not all, the Members raising and responding to the trade concern have reported it as resolved. This category also covers situations where the trade concern has been resolved for some, but not for all, of the products covered by the measure at issue.

1.3.  Paragraph 7 of the Decision provides that every two years the Secretariat should contact those Members that had raised trade concerns that had not been discussed for at least two consecutive years to enquire about their status and respective categorization. Footnote 2 of the Decision provides that the first such exercise would be carried out upon the Decision's adoption, which took place on 7 July 2025. The Secretariat was further instructed to prepare a report listing the status of the trade concerns reported based on the responses received from Members, which would be submitted to the Council for transparency purposes.

1.4.  This first report provides an overview of the actions taken by the Secretariat to fulfil this mandate, as well as a compilation of the responses received from Members to date.

2  PROCESS TO ENQUIRE ABOUT THE STATUS OF TRADE CONCERNS

2.1.  In September 2025, the Secretariat contacted 66 Members to seek information on the status of the trade concerns that they had either raised or to which they had responded. With a view to facilitating Members' review, the Secretariat compiled and shared with each relevant Member information on those trade concerns raised in the CTG since 1995 but not during its three previous formal meetings.

2.2.  The Annex to this report compiles information for all trade concerns for which responses were received by 10 November 2025 and at least one Member considers the issue to be fully or partially resolved. In addition to the information on trade concerns that had not been raised at the Council's three previous formal meetings, Members reported on the resolution of a trade concern which was last discussed at the July 2025 meeting of the Council (ID 226). Blank cells indicate either that Members reported that the concern had not yet been resolved or that no information had yet been received from the Member.

2.3.  Considering that this is the first report of its kind, and that the number of trade concerns to review was considerable and required multi‑agency coordination, some Members requested additional time to provide the relevant information. A revised version of the report will be produced once this information is received.

2.4.  As provided in paragraph 4 of the Decision, the information in the Annex will also be reflected in the Trade Concerns Database shortly after the Council's meeting of 27 November 2025.

2.5.  Members are reminded that, pursuant to paragraph 6 of the Decision, the fact that a trade concern is recorded as resolved or partially resolved in this report shall not prevent any Member from raising the same concern again in the CTG or its subsidiary bodies, or from seeking recourse to dispute settlement under the Dispute Settlement Understanding. The recording of a trade concern as resolved or partially resolved shall not create any legal consequences nor serve as ground for any legal inferences on the matter.

3  OVERVIEW OF THE RESULTS

3.1.  Based on the responses received thus far from 32 Members[2], the Annex lists 97 trade concerns that at least one Member reported as fully or partially resolved. This figure accounts for 42.5% of the 228 trade concerns that have been in the Council between 1995 and July 2025. If the 36 trade concerns that were raised at the July 2025 meeting are excluded from the calculation (i.e. because in principle they remain unresolved), this figure increases to 50.5% of the trade concerns that had ceased to be raised in the Council.

3.2.  Of 97 trade concerns in the Annex, 28  have been recorded as resolved and 69 as partially resolved. It should, however, be noted that nine of these partially resolved concerns correspond to cases where the Members that had raised it consider it to be resolved, but the status was not confirmed by the responding Members (i.e. they appear to be fully resolved but cannot be reflected as such in light of the definitions of the Decision).[3]