The Doha decision
At the Fourth Ministerial Conference in Doha in 2001, ministers agreed to continue the work programmed as well as to extend the moratorium on customs duties. They instructed the General Council, in paragraph 34 of the Doha Declaration, to report on further progress to the Fifth Ministerial in Cancun, in 2003.
Under the work programme, issues related to electronic commerce have been examined by the Council for Trade in Services, the Council for Trade in Goods, the Council for TRIPS and the Committee on Trade and Development. During the course of the work programme a number of background notes on the issues have been produced by the WTO Secretariat and many member governments have submitted documents outlining their own thoughts.
Since then …
After the Doha Ministerial Declaration, the General Council agreed to hold “dedicated” discussions on cross-cutting issues, i.e. issues whose potential relevance may “cut across” different agreements of the multilateral system. So far, there have been five discussions dedicated to electronic commerce, held under General Council’s auspices.
The issues discussed included: classification of the content of certain electronic transmissions; development-related issues; fiscal implications of e-commerce; relationship (and possible substitution effects) between e-commerce and traditional forms of commerce; imposition of customs duties on electronic transmissions; competition; jurisdiction and applicable law/other legal issues.
Participants in the dedicated discussions hold the view that the examination of these cross-cutting issues is unfinished, and that further work to clarify these issues is needed.
WT/MIN(98)/DEC/2
25 May 1998
(98-2148)