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

An open letter from various civil society organizations to WTO Director General Pascal Lamy, criticizing the undemocratic process used by the Council for Trade in Services to draft a ministerial declaration. The signatories argue that the current approach redefines 'consensus' by allowing the Chair to include non-consensual elements while requiring full agreement to remove them, potentially undermining the policy space of developing countries.

• Civil society organizations allege that the process for drafting the ministerial declaration on services is "antidemocrático y engañoso", effectively ignoring the concerns of the majority.
• The letter claims the definition of 'consensus' is being redefined within the Council for Trade in Services (CTS). Instead of requiring general agreement before including an article, the Chair can include items he deems appropriate, but these can only be removed if there is "acuerdo general completo entre los 148 Estados miembros".
• The signatories highlight that elements such as "pruebas patrón (“benchmarks”), enfoques modales específicos u objetivos numéricos" to accelerate GATS negotiations have been strongly rejected by many developing countries and Least Developed Countries (LDCs), yet they appeared without brackets in subsequent drafts by Ambassador Fernando de Mateo.
• The document expresses concern that imposing numerical targets and indicators would violate the flexibility of the GATS and threaten the "objetivos de desarrollo y el espacio político de acción de los países en vía de desarrollo".
• The letter notes that the emergency safeguarding mechanism (ESM), which was agreed upon since the Uruguay Round as per Article X.1 of the GATS, was omitted from the preliminary Ministerial text despite being a prior commitment.

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} }