Covid-19 Impacts on Multilateral Trading System

Virtual Meeting of the Acceding Countries to World Trade Organizations

Comments by

H.E. Mr. Javad Amin-Mansour

Ambassador and Deputy Permanent Representative

The Islamic Republic of Iran

Virtual Meeting of the Acceding Countries to WTO

On Covid-19 Impacts on Multilateral Trading System

9 June, 2020

بسم الله الرحمن الرحیم

 

Mr. Chairman,

I thank Ambassador of Belarus for organizing and chairing this virtual meeting on the effects of Covid-19 outbreak on the Acceding countries. My thanks also go to Mr. Alan Wolf the DSG for his invaluable remarks at the beginning of this meeting and his team in the WTO secretariat for their tireless efforts.

The Covid-19 outbreak across the globe continues to affect adversely multilateral trading system and has slowed down the volume of trade significantly. However, it has had a positive impact and that was the opportunity we gained to think about where we stand, what we are doing and where we are heading to in our collective efforts in various international organizations. We hope that trading system will be recovered soon with the contribution of all States.

There is no doubt that the WTO is in crisis due to recently-emerged differences in the positons of several Member States. The Organization was built in light of multilateralism to promote cooperation and universalism. However, the existing threats, such as: unilateralism and politicization of the organization is undermining the original principles and dismantles the collective efforts of the international community to make trade to the benefit of all.

Mr. Wolf referred to the reform. As an acceding country which is looking for membership for more than two decades, we think any type of reform should facilitate the process of accession by non-member States. Given the experiences, it seems the need for reaching consensus within the Organization for approving the new membership, increasing complexities in agreements and rules of procedures and also politicization of the accession have complicated and hampered further the process of WTO new membership. Hence, deregulation and simplification of the agreements and rules of procedure should be in priority in any kind of reform in the WTO to expedite the process of accession. We hope that universality and openness as the two important principles of the WTO will be translated into reality soon.

I wish all of you every success.

 

I thank you.