Negotiations in the "trade and environment" committee in WTO

The committee adopted the report by Mr Wolfgang KREISSL-DÖRFLER. This report refers to the decision by the GATT ministerial conference in April 1994 to set up a WTO Committee on Trade and Environment. This committee is to submit specific proposals for agreements to the WTO ministerial conference in December 1996 with a view to concluding agreements to ensure greater compatibility between efforts to liberalize international trade and a policy of sustained environmental protection. As regards relations between industrialized and developing countries, the Committee on External Economic Relations considered that the WTO ministerial conference should take clear decisions on the subject of the link between trade and the environment. Particular importance should be granted to Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAS). The implementation of environmental protection clauses in trade should not give rise to a new outbreak of protectionism. The Committee on External Economic Relations also called for a new international framework for competition which would oblige multinational companies engaged in international trade to behave in an environmentally acceptable fashion. The WTO committee was called on to examine the relationship between increasing trade and environmental pollution, particularly the problems caused by the volume of freight traffic and increased energy consumption.�