Fisheries, food security… The WTO adopts an “unprecedented” package of measures

The 164 member states of the World Trade Organization have managed to reach an agreement after five days of intense negotiations.

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The ministerial of the World Trade Organization (WTO) announced that it had approved, Friday, June 17 in Geneva (Switzerland), agreements “historical” on a series of themes. [C’est] an unprecedented set of results. It has been a long time since the WTO has achieved so many multilateral results, said the director of the institution. The results demonstrate that the WTO is capable of responding to the urgencies of our time.”

The conference aimed not only to tackle the food insecurity created by the war in Ukraine, but also to remove subsidies that facilitate overfishing, to temporarily lift the patents that protect anti-Covid vaccines or even to reform the WTO itself. After several days of intense negotiations, marked by many uncertainties and India’s intransigence on several texts, the negotiators ended up agreeing on all these subjects, announced the President of the Ministerial Conference. However, the WTO did not immediately publish the final texts.


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