At the third special session of this Committee held 10-11 October, a variety of issues remained unresolved. Five new position papers on the relationship between WTO rules versus trade obligations in multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) were submitted, but the discussions did not lead to a consensus among states about which path the WTO should follow. While the European Union, Switzerland, Norway and Japan favour the development of broad WTO guidelines, which could then be applied to specific cases, other states like the Australia, New Zealand and the US, believe existing WTO accords already cover all legitimate environmental concerns and should be applied directly to concrete examples.

The European Union supports the inclusion of environmental issues in any new WTO trade round, yet most WTO members and many developing nations remain firmly opposed.

The special session also included discussions on the subject of information exchange between the respective secretariats of the WTO and MEAs. A new EU position paper strongly supported giving observer status to MEA secretariats adding that "information exchange sessions [between the WTO and MEAs] should now become a formal feature of WTO work and consequently become officially institutionalized, as meetings of the CTE in regular session." The Committee also discussed reducing tariff and non-tariff barriers to environmental goods and services.

Governments also remain divided on the topic of eco-labelling. In regular session, Switzerland submitted an unofficial position paper on the possible need for amendments to existing WTO rules or for international harmonization of eco-labelling, but no consensus was reached.

Click for access to recent position papers submitted to the WTO Trade and Environment Committee.