16.10.2018

CLIPPING INTERNACIONAL NEGINT Brasília, 16 de outubro de 2018

Índice I. OMC _______________________________________________ 2 WTO diplomats — stand up to US power politics________________________ 2 II. NEGOCIAÇÕES REGIONAIS E BILATERAIS _________________ 3 Indonesian free-trade agreement deal still on track _____________________ 3 EU scraps plans for Brexit summit statement on future trade deal _________ 4 III. OUTROS ____________________________________________ 8 El Mercosur espera que la UE “mueva” para destrabar el Tratado de Libre Comercio ______________________________________________________ 8

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I. OMC WTO diplomats — stand up to US power politics Financial Times (Reino Unido) Tharman Shanmugaratnam, in “ A new co-operative order for a new era” (October 12), rightly warns against “complacency in the face of unprecedented challenge”. But he did not mention the complacency of all 164 World Trade Organization members in violating, since 2016, their collective legal duty — and democratic mandate given by parliaments when they approved the WTO Agreement — to maintain the WTO Appellate Body as legally prescribed in Article 17 WTO Dispute Settlement Understanding (ie “composed of seven persons”, with vacancies being “filled as they arise”). Article IX of the WTO Agreement gives the WTO Ministerial Conference and the WTO General Council all legal powers needed for filling the currently four vacant Appellate Body positions by majority decisions, and for adopting by majority an “authoritative interpretation”, rejecting the opportunistic claims by the US Trump administration that the WTO Appellate Body procedures and their judicial clarifications of WTO rules through more than 350 WTO dispute settlement rulings since 1995 — celebrated by the same WTO members as the “crown jewel” of the WTO legal system for more than 20 years — should now be thrown into the dustbin of legal civilisation so as to enable US lobbies to negotiate more protectionist WTO trade remedy rules. Why do national parliaments and civil society fail to hold WTO diplomats accountable for their complacency in allowing aggressive US unilateralism and “diminished giant syndrome” to destroy the WTO legal and dispute settlement system? Is it not naive to believe that “a more co-operative international order” can be built without international rule of law and without democratic institutions holding their UN and WTO diplomats accountable for intergovernmental power politics driven by domestic interest group pressures? Why does the EU — whose Lisbon treaty requires promoting “strict observance of international law” (Article 3) also in the EU’s external relations — exercise no leadership in protecting the global public good of the WTO legal system, on which the welfare of billions of people all over the world depends?

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Why does our “free press” fail to advocate for the transnational rule of law as prescribed by democratic institutions when they approved and ratified the WTO Agreement?

II. NEGOCIAÇÕES REGIONAIS E BILATERAIS Indonesian free-trade agreement deal still on track The Australian (Austrália) The issue of the bilateral free trade deal was not discussed in a recent exchange between Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Indonesian President Joko Widodo ahead of the Coalition’s foreign policy shift, government sources have said. The ABC reported there is speculation Jakarta could reconsider the deal after Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he would consider moving the Australian embassy to Jerusalem. Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi has been meeting with the Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad Al Maliki today and may give a statement on the issue of Australia afterwards. “During his meeting with President Jokowi at Presidential Palace, [Palestinian Foreign] Minister Malki conveyed his highest appreciation for the commitment and support of the Government and People of Indonesia for Palestine,” the Indonesian Foreign Minister tweeted yesterday. The Indonesian trade minister has also said there are no plans to suspend the IA-CEPA Australia Indonesia trade deal over Mr Morrison’s announcement he is considering moving the Australian embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The Palestinian Ambassador Izzat Salah Abdulhadi, has told The Australian the Council of Arab Ambassadors will release a statement tomorrow calling for a meeting with Prime

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Minister Scott Morrison and Foreign Minister Marise Payne to explain Australia’s position on Jerusalem. The Council of Arab Ambassadors is a group of 15 Middle Eastern Ambassadors in Australia. Indonesia is the largest Muslim country in the world, and the free trade deal with Australia will be its first. “I have been in direct contact with President Joko Widodo over the course of last night and through this morning,” Mr Morrison told parliament on Tuesday. “I have been pleased to be able to explain very clearly the nature of the announcements that I have made today. “And I have been very pleased with the response that I have received from President Joko Widodo.” The embassy move proposal was announced on Tuesday ahead of the Wentworth byelection, which has a large Jewish population. Mr Morrison said he looked forward to going to the ASEAN, APEC and G20 summits in coming months and talking about his ideas of doing things differently in the Middle East. The free trade deal with Indonesia is set to unlock education opportunities in the Asian country, which has a workforce of more than 130 million people but half of them only have a primary school education.

EU scraps plans for Brexit summit statement on future trade deal The Guardian (Reino Unido) EU leaders have scrapped plans to make public a draft declaration on the bloc’s future trade deal with the UK and are set to rule out a November Brexit summit after Michel Barnier said the necessary “decisive progress” in the negotiations had failed to materialise.

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An outline of an agreement was due to be “on the table” at a summit dinner of leaders on Wednesday night, before which the prime minister is scheduled to address the 27 other EU heads of state. An extraordinary meeting of leaders to finalise the outline of the future relationship, a step long-sought by Downing Street, had also been pencilled in for the weekend of 17 and 18 November. Developments on Sunday, when the Brexit secretary, Dominic Raab, refused to sign off on an agreement on the Irish border, have brought the carefully choreographed plans to a halt. Arriving in Luxembourg, where he will brief EU ministers on the state of the negotiations, Barnier said his benchmark for success had not been reached. “We are not there yet. There are several subjects that remain open, including Ireland,” he said. “As I understand we need more time to find this comprehensive agreement and achieve decisive progress.” Barnier said the EU was going to work “calmly and seriously” to finalise an agreement. A senior EU official said that leaders would react accordingly to Barnier’s decision. “Since there is no agreement on the Irish backstop there will not be an outline of joint political declaration on the table on Wednesday evening … [that] will not change before Wednesday,” the senior EU official said. “I think that was clear on Sunday afternoon, that what we got from Michel Barnier [the EU’s chief negotiator] was that the spirit of talks on Sunday were not promising any progress before the summit this Wednesday.” Germany’s EU minister, Michael Roth, said Berlin was aware the prime minister was constrained by her domestic vulnerability. Asked what his message to May would be, he told reporters: “Take responsibility and be constructive.” “We can have either a smooth Brexit or rocky one,” said France’s EU affairs minister, Nathalie Loiseau. “We all prefer a smooth one but we have to stand ready if there is no deal.”

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During a summit in Salzburg last month, Donald Tusk, the president of the European council, had demanded “maximum progress” in the talks to allow the negotiations to develop. The backstop for avoiding a hard border on the island of Ireland remains a key sticking point, with the EU proposing that Northern Ireland in effect stay in the customs union and single market. Tusk, on the bidding of the French president, Emmanuel Macron, had said such progress being made in the talks was a condition for an extraordinary meeting on Brexit to be held in November. It now appears that a crunch summit in December could be in play. But senior UK officials have suggested that such a timetable could make it all but impossible to get the necessary Brexit legislation through parliament in time for 29 March 2019. “It is always the case that decisions are made at five to 12 [midnight],” a senior EU official involved in the negotiations said. Discussions in Brussels had been held in recent days over holding a “no-deal” summit in November, and this option will be discussed by leaders. A French government official suggested that an alternative plan would be to bring a November summit forward should there be movement by the UK on the Irish issue in the coming weeks, with December then taking on the ceremonial role of signing off on a political declaration. With such uncertainty in the process, the European commission is expected this week to publish a new raft of “no deal” notices to alert businesses and member states on how to deal with the UK crashing out of the bloc. They had been held back for fear of upsetting the talks, at a point when progress had been detected. Jean-Claude Juncker, the European commission president, is to update leaders on the bloc’s state of readiness at the summit dinner, with an EU source saying “the time is ripe” for such a move. “These are real issues,” the official said. “Maybe they are not as dramatic as in the UK but they are still real and they will still affect life on the continent.”

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The EU official, speaking on the eve of what had been billed as a “moment of truth” summit for the Brexit talks, said: “Clearly we are not in the place we wanted to be in October, so from that perspective that truth is … we have clarity actually. More clarity now than in September in Salzburg. What we have found out in the process leading to this meeting on Wednesday is that it is not going to be so easy to find a deal between the EU and the UK.” Asked whether Tusk and the EU leaders would be careful to avoid repeating the outcome of the Salzburg summit, which was widely said to have been a humiliation for May, the EU official responded: “Sometimes you have the impression that telling the truth is showing a lack of respect but we believe that it is on the contrary.” He added: “The economic part of Chequers is not going to work, there is no way to frictionless trade outside the single market and customs union.” May is to address the EU27 leaders in a room on the third floor of the Europa building in Brussels, before the heads of state have a dinner without her to discuss their next steps. “There will not be any food on the table,” the EU official joked of the first meeting, adding that he did not expect May’s intervention to play a major role in the discussions. He said attempts to divide the 27 other member states have only strengthened the unity of the EU and their backing for both Barnier and the Republic of Ireland in the talks. On Monday, May had said she would not accept the EU’s proposal on the backstop, in which Northern Ireland could potentially stay in the customs union and single market as the rest of the UK withdrew. The EU official said: “What I also expect as one of the messages that will be expressed by the summit on Wednesday is full and strong support of the line as expressed in the [European Union’s] guidelines so that also covers the issue of Ireland. “You remember that line that there is no withdrawal agreement without a backstop that will work, which is legally binding, so I think that is not going to change. But we still hope that there is a way to find an agreement.”

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III. OUTROS El Mercosur espera que la UE “mueva” para destrabar el Tratado de Libre Comercio Clarin (Espanha) Argentina, Brasil, Paraguay y Uruguay, socios en el Mercosur, esperarán un "movimiento" de la Unión Europea (UE) que permita destrabar el estancado intento de acuerdo de libre comercio bilateral, informaron este lunes los cancilleres del bloque reunidos en Montevideo. Jorge Faurie (Argentina), Aloysio Nunes (Brasil), Luis Alberto Castiglioni (Paraguay) y Rodolfo Nin Novoa (Uruguay) se reunieron en la capital uruguaya para analizar "una serie de propuestas" de la UE "para poder continuar con las negociaciones", que comenzaron hace casi 20 años. A pedido de los presidentes del Mercosur, los cancilleres han "avanzado" en el análisis de "casi todos" los puntos presentados por la UE, dijo Nin Novoa en rueda de prensa. Sin dar el menor detalle de algún avance conseguido, los ministros se limitaron a manifestar su "vocación" de "llegar a un entendimiento comercial" con la UE. "(Logramos una) plataforma de acuerdo (entre los cuatro países) que le vamos a plantear a los europeos, para esperar por parte de ellos un movimiento que nos permita sentirnos más satisfechos con las propuestas que nos han realizado", resumió Nin Novoa. Entre risas, los jerarcas respondieron que "no hay un plazo determinado" para alcanzar un pacto cuya finalización han esbozado en reiteradas ocasiones anteriormente, aunque el acuerdo se ha revelado en extremo complejo. En la última ronda de negociaciones bilaterales en Montevideo a mediados de setiembre, la posibilidad de sellar un pacto volvió a estancarse por diferencias en áreas clave. Entonces fuentes oficiales uruguayas señalaron que las conversaciones técnicas siguieron "en la misma" (sin avances), derrapando sobre las cuotas de productos agropecuarios, un área en la que los dos bloques son competitivos.

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La UE planteó "temas nuevos sobre servicios, subsidios, indicaciones geográficas", que tornaron más compleja la negociación, explicó hace exactamente un mes Nin Novoa. El Mercosur está además en un compás de espera por el resultado de las elecciones en Brasil, donde el ultaderechista Jair Bolsonaro es favorito para la segunda vuelta del domingo 28 de octubre ante el izquierdista Fernando Haddad. La UE y el Mercosur llevan 35 rondas de negociación sin alcanzar un tratado. (AFP)

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