MAPPING TBT CAPACITY BUILDING EFFORTS OF THE WTO SECRETARIAT
AND OF MEMBER GOVERNMENTS

TENTH TRIENNIAL REVIEW

Proposal from the European Union

The following submission, dated 28 May 2024, is being circulated at the request of the delegation of the European Union.

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1  BACKGROUND

1.1.  Capacity building for developing countries and LDCs on TBT issues is crucial in order to assist WTO Members in reducing technical barriers to trade.

1.2.  In order to assess the needs for capacity building and to coordinate efforts it is necessary to know where gaps exist. Unlike i.e. in the TRIPS Council, no mapping of capacity building is being done in the TBT Committee. In order to achieve a comprehensive picture of the state of play, it would be necessary to map both the WTO Secretariat's capacity building work as well as the work done by Member Governments and Observer organizations.

2  PROPOSAL

2.1.  The EU proposes a comprehensive mapping of capacity building work to be done in order to assess the geographic and thematic distribution of TBT capacity building efforts, accounting for both the efforts of the WTO Secretariat as well as those of WTO Members and Observer organizations, with a view to:

a._    Supporting the capacity of WTO Members to work to reduce technical barriers to trade;

b._    Enabling coordination of capacity building efforts; and

c._     Finding out where more capacity building efforts are needed.

2.2.  Topics and areas of focus could include:

a._     Questionnaire to be filled by Member Governments and Observer organizations on their recent and planned TBT (standardisation, conformity assessment and technical regulation) capacity building efforts, including their geographic distribution and content; and

b._    Report from the WTO Secretariat on their recent and planned TBT capacity building efforts, including their geographic distribution and content; and

c._     Report from the WTO Secretariat synthesising the answers given by Member Governments and Observer organizations to the questionnaire (point a.) with a view to enable collaboration/synergies.

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