Within the framework of the 11th Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to be held in Buenos Aires on 10-13 December, Foreign Minister Jorge Faurie, Argentine Vice President and President of the Senate Gabriela Michetti, and President of the House of Deputies Emilio Monzó opened the Parliamentary Conference on the WTO this afternoon.
Faurie stated that this meeting -which will bring together legislators from different countries for two days- is highly important, as it promotes debate in parallel to the Ministerial Conference, making us part of "an open, transparent and inclusive process" and enabling "dialogue and consensus."
"For us, as representatives of the Executive branch, this meeting is highly significant for two reasons," Foreign Minister Jorge Faurie stated before the legislators, and explained that "lawmakers are key in the process of deciding on the agreements we can reach in trade matters; you are the ones who will discuss, approve and ratify any agreements" and "it is also you, as representatives of the people, that will guarantee that the agreements we can reach reflect the popular will."
Organized jointly by the European Parliament and the Inter-Parliamentary Union, the aim of the Parliamentary Conference is to “strengthen democracy at the international level by bringing a parliamentary dimension to multilateral cooperation on trade issues.”
Faurie also underscored that "in the past few decades, trade and foreign investment had managed to grow over global GDP and partly fuelled development. But since 2008 there has been a period of relative stagnation. However, 2017 has shown more dynamic growth. We have to spare no effort to keep this recovery and guarantee that this increase in trade is both sustained and sustainable.
"Production methods have considerably changed owing to the boom of technology and this has had an impact on integration processes: nowadays countries compete for a share in production value chains," the Argentine Foreign Minister stated and underscored that "the paradigm of factories located in a single place has completely shifted", which "has generated anxiety and sometimes unease among our peoples, and brings into question some of the central principles that regulated trade and production in the 20th century."
"If we do not abide by those rules, we may sometimes win, but we will also lose many times," the Argentine Foreign Minister stated and concluded by underscoring that "such lack of rules will generally damage the system.”
9 December 2017
Press release No. 567/17
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