Statement by Norway at the formal Council for Trade in Services Special Session, 28 September 2007

CTS-SS 28 September 2007.   Norwegian Statement
Mr. Chairman, 
We have had a useful cluster during the last couple of weeks. Thanks to a tremendous effort by the coordinators of the plurilateral requests we have been able to go rather deeply into many sectors and modes. In fact, in many cases too deeply, because time was often too short.  Nevertheless, and also thanks to many useful bilaterals we now have an even clearer picture of the market access situation than before.
Linking this to your own Enchilada process, Mr. Chairman, the question now is how best to prepare for the work in the coming weeks and months.
In our opinion, Mr. Chairman, it would be useful if you could lead the work to create a roadmap, or platform, as we have called it earlier, for the final negotiations in Services. The underlying idea behind the concept of a roadmap is to try to capture the progress made since the Hong Kong Ministerial and thus “updating” Annex C so as to make it an operational basis for the end game of the negotiations.
Annex C and the objectives stated therein are obviously the point of departure for a platform for further work. But, as many have pointed out, much has happened since Hong Kong almost two years ago, and this needs to be reflected.
• The most obvious element in Annex C which is out-of-date, is literally the dates. This must be reflected and we need to find agreement on a date for submission of final offers.
• Secondly, substantial work has been done in areas like domestic regulations, rules, S&D and LDC-modalities.  These are important elements in an end game and in our view progress must be reflected.
• Thirdly,  there should be some way to capture the  evolution in our market access negotiations where both the plurilateral mechanism during the last one and a half years  and the bilateral negotiations have been constructive as far as they have gone. This needs to be transformed and fed into final offers and schedules.
• It may also be relevant to have some reference to ministerial involvement of sorts  at the appropriate time.
The end result of the services negoiations will be an essential part of a Single Multilateral Undertaking which shall contribute to economic growth and wellfare of all trading partners. We must therefore ensure that all sectors and modes and all elements of essential interest to all participants are taken care of.
Thank you.