10. The Committee noted that work on the Guidelines had been initiated following a proposal made by the Delegation of the USA at its Third Session (1995) and that the 21st Session of the Commission (1995) had approved the elaboration of the Guidelines. In introducing the document, the Delegation of the USA stated that the Guidelines described the nature and content of equivalence agreements for food import and export inspection and certification systems and set out a process whereby such agreements could be established between trading partners. The Representative of the WTO noted with satisfaction the progress that had been made to date on the Guidelines.
11. Several Spanish-speaking delegations noted problems in the Spanish version of the text and the Committee agreed that the Delegation of Argentina would act as rapporteur for the final version of the draft text in Spanish. Therefore, comments raised that related only to the Spanish text are not generally reported here.
TITLE
12. No changes were made.
SECTION 1 - SCOPE
13. It was noted that the English version of the text referring to “less formal” agreements was the correct interpretation of the meaning of this provision (rather than “informal”).
SECTION 2 - DEFINITIONS
14. The Committee decided to retain those definitions that had already been agreed to in other texts and that had been approved by the Commission. It also decided to retain the full text of these definitions rather than make cross-references to them, in order that the final text would be complete and self-contained. It was noted that the term “government agency” was equivalent to the term “government body” for the purpose of this document. The Delegation of Indonesia proposed that a definition of the term “competent authority” be included in the text.
SECTION 3 - PURPOSE OF AGREEMENTS
15. The Committee agreed to extend the purpose relating to the use of collective resources to indicate that these would be used “more efficiently and effectively”.
SECTION 4 - TYPES OF AGREEMENTS
16. The Committee agreed to change the title of this Section to “Scope and Types of Agreements” for clarity and consistency with the content of the Section. A paragraph (former paragraph 14) that dealt with consideration of the exporting country’s measures rather than with the type of agreement was transferred to the following Section.
17. The Committee agreed with the comments of several countries that the agreements to be covered by this text were those that dealt with the equivalence of systems rather than requirements per se and made the necessary changes to the text. In order to remove any ambiguity and to make a positive statement, it was agreed to reword the sentence that indicated that agreements “may be entered into where equivalence has been established in respect of some or all requirements”. This provided flexibility in cases where not all requirements were covered by the agreement.
SECTION 5 - CONSIDERATIONS BEFORE ENTERING INTO BILATERAL OR MULTILATERAL DISCUSSIONS
18. The Committee agreed to reword the paragraph dealing with the establishment of priorities for consultations dealing with the development of agreements. It also agreed to reword the paragraph dealing with the provision of technical assistance to indicate the appropriate relationship between importing developed countries and exporting developing countries.
SECTION 6 - INITIATING DISCUSSIONS TOWARDS AN EQUIVALENCE AGREEMENT
19. The Committee noted that the text provided for cases where the importing country would have difficulty in responding to requests for the establishment of an agreement. It was noted that the SPS Agreement obliged WTO Members to enter into consultations if requested to do so (Article 4.2). However, the Committee noted that the Guidelines were applicable also to provisions covered by the TBT Agreement where no such obligation was mentioned and were for use by all countries, not only WTO Members. The relevant paragraphs were amended to take these matters into consideration in a way that did not affect either the rights or obligations of WTO Members under the SPS Agreement. It was also agreed that responses to requests for consultations should be made in a timely manner. A paragraph relating to the provision of relevant information needed for the consultative process was deleted as the required details had been set out in another Section of the Guidelines.
SECTION 7 - CONSULTATIVE PROCESS FOR EQUIVALENCE AGREEMENTS
20. The Committee agreed to a number of improvements to the text of this Section in the use of the terms “risk” and “hazard” and to emphasize that the agreements covered by the Guidelines referred to control measures and not to requirements per se. It was agreed to retain the separate references to equivalence agreements for food safety (sanitary) control measures and to equivalence agreements for other relevant requirements for food. The text dealing with the first of these references was amended for consistency with the SPS Agreement.
21. The Committee noted several references to “participating competent authorities” and recalled that the roles and responsibilities of “competent authority(ies)” were covered by the Guidelines for the Design, Operation, Assessment and Accreditation of Food Import and Export Inspection and Certification Systems[4], adopted by the Commission in 1997, especially the Section dealing with Inspection and Certification System Infrastructure. However, it agreed to replace reference to “competent authorities” with a reference to “participants in the agreements” where possible, this being more correct in the context of this Section of the Guidelines.
22. The Committee agreed to include a provision for the development of procedures to allow the importing country to reexamine products to verify that an exporting country had corrected deficiencies.
23. The Committee debated the provision relating to the enhancement of public confidence in the agreement. Several delegations were of the opinion that the negotiating process was primarily a matter of government-to-government relations and that non-governmental participation in this process was a matter for individual governments to decide in accordance with national legislative and regulatory processes. These delegations were of the view that the text as written was too prescriptive and preferred to use the word “may” as the operational verb in this sentence. Other delegations and the observers from IFOAM, Consumers International and WTO drew attention to the transparency provisions of the adopted Codex Principles for Food Export Inspection and Certification and the general approach of the Commission towards transparency. These delegations preferred to use the word “should” as the operational verb in this sentence.
24. The Committee agreed to modify the paragraph by introducing a phrase to protect legitimate confidentiality, consistent with the transparency provisions of the Codex Principles for Food Export Inspection and Certification. The Committee also decided to retain the use of the word “should”. The Delegations of Egypt, Malaysia, Singapore, Uruguay and Vietnam reserved their positions in relation to this decision on the use of the word “should”.
25. In the same paragraph, the Committee also agreed to change the word “basis” in the original text to “content”. Several delegations stated that they preferred to use the broader term “basis”.
SECTION 8 - PILOT STUDIES
26. Some Delegations questioned the need for this Section and its practical application in the development of equivalence agreements. The delegations of Australia and Botswana noted that in their experience, pilot studies had proved to be practical and useful and that in any case the provisions of this Section were entirely optional. The Committee agreed to retain the text.
SECTION 9 - DRAFTING THE AGREEMENT
27. No changes were made to this Section.
SECTION 10 - IMPLEMENTING THE AGREEMENT
28. The Committee agreed that proposals for new or revised measures that pertain to the agreement should be notified instead of the finalized measures, in order to be consistent with the obligations of WTO Members under the SPS and TBT Agreements.
APPENDIX A - CONTENTS OF EQUIVALENCE AGREEMENTS
29. The Committee agreed to the contents of the Appendix with small changes to the châpeau and to the paragraph on Sample Collection. Separate provisions were made regarding Entry into Force and for the Review, Modification and Termination of the Agreement, primarily for clarity. The paragraph dealing with Signatures on the Agreement was also modified for the sake of clarity.
STATUS OF THE DRAFT GUIDELINES FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF EQUIVALENCE AGREEMENTS REGARDING FOOD IMPORT AND EXPORT INSPECTION AND CERTIFICATION SYSTEMS
30. The Committee agreed to advance the Draft Guidelines for the Development of Equivalence Agreements regarding Food Import and Export Inspection and Certification Systems to Step 8 for consideration by the 23rd Session of the Commission. The revised text of the Draft Guidelines is attached as Appendix II to this report.
31. The Delegation of Chile expressed its reservation with regard to the integrity of the new version of the Spanish text, in particular with the procedure followed whereby not only were comments translated, but the entire text had been re-translated. This had resulted in the new Spanish text differing from the previous text in paragraphs where no decision had been made by the Committee to make amendments. The Delegation of Spain expressed the same reservation.
32. The Delegation of Argentina clarified that the reservation expressed by Chile was unrelated to the responsibility given to it by the Committee (see para. 11 above).
