MULTILATERAL SYSTEM OF NOTIFICATION AND REGISTRATION OF GEOGRAPHICAL INDICATIONS FOR WINES AND SPIRITS

Report by the Chairman, Ambassador Dacio Castillo (Honduras)

1.  This report on the negotiations on the establishment of a multilateral system of notification and registration of geographical indications (GIs) for wines and spirits ("GI Register") in the Special Session of the Council for TRIPS is submitted on my own responsibility and is without prejudice to the positions of delegations and to the outcome of the negotiations.

2.  Since my last written report, circulated as document TN/IP/26 on 20 December 2018, there has been little activity in the TRIPS negotiations on a multilateral register for wine and spirit GIs. While there had been some signs of active reflection on the part of the demandeurs in the past, these have not resulted in any concrete initiative or declaration in the TRIPS Special Session. I have also not been able to detect any movement in Members' positions over the course of this year.

3.  Since the beginning of the year I have held a number of informal conversations with individual delegations and organised a small group consultation with the most active delegations on 1 May. I also held an informal open-ended meeting on 4 December 2019 to provide an opportunity for Members to share their views in an open-ended meeting. I reported the state of play in the TRIPS Special Session to the informal HODs/TNC meetings on 3 May and 6 December 2019.

4.  In all these meetings, I highlighted once again that the lack of activity in the TRIPS Special Session stands in stark contrast with considerable activity on GIs in bilateral and regional trade agreements that create multiple new protection regimes for GIs, and to the active development of domestic systems of GI protection in a number of WTO Members. This general momentum has unfortunately not translated into increased initiative in this negotiating group, which has not engaged in the substance of its mandated work on a GI Register for wine and spirit GIs for several years now.

5.  I once again invited delegations to reflect on whether a discussion of the recent developments in bilateral trade agreements and domestic GI protection systems could be relevant or useful to the TRIPS Special Session, and might help reinvigorate its work. Given the pace of these developments, such a discussion might cast new light on some of the negotiating positions, some of which date from around 2008.

6.  At these meetings, delegations supporting the modalities proposal contained in TN/C/W/52 reiterated their demands for parallel advances on all three TRIPS issues^[1] and confirmed that they viewed the WTO as the right forum to discuss these questions. As they judged the current difficult negotiating context as not conducive to engaging substantively at this time, however, they continued to reflect on these issues and periodically re-assess the situation in this regard.