Carta Abierta al Director General de la OMC - Pascal Lamy ¿Redefiniendo lo que significa “consenso” en la OMC?

The document is an open letter from various civil society organizations to WTO Director General Pascal Lamy, criticizing the process used by the Council for Trade in Services (CTS) to draft the ministerial declaration. The authors argue that the current process allows the Chair to include non-consensual elements—such as numerical targets and plurilateral approaches—while excluding agreed-upon items like the emergency safeguard mechanism (ESM). They warn that forcing countries to open specific sectors through numerical indicators threatens the policy space and development goals of developing countries and Least Developed Countries (LDCs). The letter demands that the final draft presented in Hong Kong use brackets to clearly mark positions where no consensus exists.

• Civil society organizations claim the process for drafting the ministerial declaration on services is 'antidemocrático y engañoso', alleging that the Chair of the Council for Trade in Services (CTS) is redefining 'consensus' by including proposals without general agreement while requiring full consensus among 148 member states to remove them.
• The authors highlight that several elements included in the Chair's notes—specifically 'benchmarks', specific modal approaches, and numerical targets to accelerate GATS negotiations—have been strongly rejected by many developing countries and Least Developed Countries (LDCs).
• The letter asserts that the use of numerical targets and indicators to force the opening of specific sectors contradicts GATS flexibility and endangers the 'espacio político de acción' (policy space) and development objectives of developing nations.

APA

Center for International Environmental Law (2005). Carta Abierta al Director General de la OMC - Pascal Lamy ¿Redefiniendo lo que significa “consenso” en la OMC? https://www.ciel.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Lamy_1Nov05_Spanish.pdf

Chicago

Center for International Environmental Law. Carta Abierta al Director General de la OMC - Pascal Lamy ¿Redefiniendo lo que significa “consenso” en la OMC? 2005. https://www.ciel.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Lamy_1Nov05_Spanish.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite press release |author=Center for International Environmental Law |title=Carta Abierta al Director General de la OMC - Pascal Lamy ¿Redefiniendo lo que significa “consenso” en la OMC? |date=27 October 2005 |url=https://www.ciel.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Lamy_1Nov05_Spanish.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@misc{centerforinternationalenvironmentallaw2005carta, author = {{Center for International Environmental Law}}, title = {{Carta Abierta al Director General de la OMC - Pascal Lamy ¿Redefiniendo lo que significa “consenso” en la OMC?}}, publisher = {Center for International Environmental Law}, year = {2005}, month = oct, url = {https://www.ciel.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Lamy_1Nov05_Spanish.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }