CIEL produces a paper for UNEP entitled, EEZ Fisheries Access Arrangements and the WTO Subsidies Agreement - Legal Analysis and Options for Improved Disciplines.

This paper was commissioned based on a request by governments that UNEP looks into the question of access arrangement in the broader political economy framework with a view to contributing to the discussions and providing analysis on how the issue might be handled in the World Trade Organization (WTO) context.

Conclusions reached in this paper are that access agreements per se do not breach any rules of the WTO's Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (ASCM), but certain fisheries enabled by access agreements may fall within its disciplines. For these cases, the paper contains concrete textual suggestions for improving the ASCM with regards to "access-related" fisheries subsidies.

Working closely with UNEP, CIEL consulted and presented its findings on several occasions to WTO delegations, government officials, inter-governmental and non-governmental organizations on several occasions, including the UNEP-ICTSD-WWF workshop on Development and Sustainability in the WTO Fisheries Subsidies Negotiations: Issues and Alternatives, held on 11 May 2006, and at a WWF-UNEP Consultation, held on 7 December 2006.

UNEP will publish this paper shortly, along with a forthcoming second paper focusing on sustainability and transparency concerns of access agreements.

For more information, contact:

In Washington DC, Marcos Orellana, +1 202 742 5847, morellana@ciel.org
In Geneva, Nathalie Bernasconi-Osterwalder, +41-22-321-4777, nbernasconi@ciel.org


This page last modified on 10 December 2007.