Responsible consensus: a final bid to rescue the WTO from institutional irrelevance?

Trade Bites

‘En direct’ from the World Trade Organisation Public Forum 2024, this podcast focuses on the WTO’s decision-making process. Responsible consensus was a phrase first coined after the Ministerial Meeting in Abu Dhabi earlier this year, due to impasse on a number of issues. The organisations’ rules make it clear that nothing can be agreed unless there is consensus among all members. But what does it mean if one country, or a small group of countries, block an agreement which is supported by most of the other 166 WTO members? Is this the fault of the majority for failing to bring the dissenting states along with them? Tackling this difficult area where arcane questions of WTO procedure collide with raw geopolitics are special guests; H.E. Mr Tan Hung Seng, Ambassador of Singapore; Gabrielle Marceau, Professor at the University of Geneva and Senior Counsellor in the Research Division (ERSD) of the WTO Secretariat; Abhijit Das, International trade expert and independent researcher; and Professor Andrew Lang, Edinburgh School of Law with our host Chris Horseman, Borderlex.