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Opinion | How the next WTO chief can ensure the Covid-19 crisis doesn’t go to waste
- While the pandemic has exacerbated long-standing problems in the rules-based trading system, its consequences provide the next director general with an opportunity to force members to deal with three of the organisation’s most divisive issues
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The World Trade Organization is about to elect its first female director general. Be it Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala from Nigeria or Yoo Myung-hee from South Korea, she will find the WTO in a deep crisis.
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The rules-based trading system has been cracking for a long time. It is now caught up in agonising geopolitical tensions, and the pandemic has exacerbated old problems.
Governments’ initial reaction of halting exports on medical supplies and medicines has further eroded confidence in the WTO’s capacity to ensure adherence to trade rules. As then European Central Bank president Mario Draghi pledged in 2012, the next director general must be ready to do “whatever it takes” to repair confidence in the WTO.
In Geneva, it is common to hear that the WTO is a “member-driven organisation”; ambassadors believe this is what makes it unique. However, governments are ultimately responsible for conducting all intergovernmental organisations.
What makes the WTO unique is the practice of interpreting the “member-driven” motto as a government’s monopoly on the right of initiative. This needs to be reconsidered.
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