REPORT TO THE COUNCIL FOR TRADE IN GOODS ON IMPROVEMENTS
IN THE FUNCTIONING OF THE COMMITTEE ON
TRADE-RELATED INVESTMENT MEASURES

1  iNTRODUCTION

1.1.  This report was prepared at the request[1] of the Chair of the Council for Trade in Goods (CTG). All CTG subsidiary bodies were asked to produce written reports summarizing their discussions and describing the improvements they had agreed on. On 30 June 2023, the CTG Chair held a meeting with the Chairs of the subsidiary bodies at which all Chairs were requested to submit their reports no later than in the first week of November 2023, and to ensure that all improvements made since the conclusion of MC12 were appropriately reflected in those reports. The process that led to the adoption of this report is described below.

1.2.  Discussions on the reform of the TRIMs Committee started[2] in the regular Fall meeting of the Committee in October 2022. At that meeting, the Chair, Ms Debora Ponce, delivered remarks on the then-ongoing consultations at the level of the General Council and the CTG regarding WTO reform and indicated that all subsidiary bodies had been tasked to explore ways to improve their daily functioning and better deliver on their respective mandates. She informed Members that, at the request of the CTG Chair, all Chairs would submit – under their own responsibility – a report on the current functioning of their respective Committees. After sharing her draft report with the Membership in a draft form, the Chair submitted her report to the CTG on 28 November 2022.[3]

1.3.  The report reflected the concrete actions adopted by the Committee over the years to improve its work and provided a comprehensive overview of the current status of the Committee's practices. Based on what was contained in this report and in all other subsidiary bodies' Chairs reports, the CTG Secretariat circulated on 11 January 2023 a "Comparison Matrix" contained in document _G/C/W/824, providing a general overview of the main elements that seemed to be comparable across the reports. A revised version of the Matrix was circulated in document _G/C/W/824/Rev.1.

1.4.  At the February 2023 meeting of the Committee, several Members raised preliminary ideas concerning potential improvements to the functioning of the Committee.[4] Proposals for improvement were also received in writing.[5] Following his election as Chair of the Committee, Mr Po-Feng Huang invited Members to an informal meeting on 19 July 2023, in order to discuss these preliminary ideas.