[DC-Trade] Report of inaugural meeting

[Jeremy Malcolm]

Here is a brief report of our inaugural meeting which took place at the
12th IGF in Geneva this morning at 10:40.

*1. Presentations**
*
Jeremy Malcolm (EFF) gave a brief presentation about the dynamic
coalition itself, including its history and the number and composition
of its members.

Jyoti Pandy (EFF) presented the background paper that was finalized on
December 4, which provides a resource for the Dynamic Coalition's work
going forward.

2. *Resolution on transparency*

There was an extended discussion of the draft resolution on transparency
that had earlier been finalized on the list.  At the request of two of
those present, very minor wording changes were made to one of the
sentences of the preamble, with the effect of making the statement more
agnostic about the desirability of making trade rules on digital
issues.  Meeting participants were offered the choice to keep the
original sentence, to accept the changes, or to delete the sentence. By
a narrow margin it was agreed to accept the changes.

Thus amended the resolution was accepted, and it can be described as
having been "endorsed by rough consensus of the inaugural meeting of the
Dynamic Coalition at the 2017 IGF".  Reporting on the resolution
includes the following:

  * https://www.ip-watch.org/2017/12/19/governments-must-provide-transparency-trade-negotiations-coalition-says-igf/
  * https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/12/resolution-transparency-trade-negotiations-endorsed-un-internet-governance-forum

*3. Discussion on priorities and work program for 2018*

The floor was then opened for a discussion on the Dynamic Coalition's
possible work program for 2018.

William Drake, U. Zurich spoke on initiatives to link trade and IG
communities and discussions, drawing on his work with UNCTAD and the
World Economic Forum. He noted that UNCTAD’s e-commerce week comes up in
April 16-20, and suggested we could do something to build a process of
outreach to more players including holding a session there.  He also
said that we need to make the Dynamic Coalition more inclusive over the
coming year, including adding more members from the Internet technical
community and business community. He said that beginning with work on
transparency was the correct approach, given the controversial nature of
other issues such as trade rules on Internet data flows.

Lee Tuthill from the WTO spoke about the transparency of the WTO
compared to other trade bodies such as plurilateral negotiations, and
said that she would join as a member of the Dynamic Coalition in order
to assist our efforts to bridge between the trade and Internet
governance communities.

-- 

Jeremy Malcolm
Senior Global Policy Analyst
Electronic Frontier Foundation
https://eff.org
jmalcolm at eff.org

Tel: 415.436.9333 ext 161

:: Defending Your Rights in the Digital World ::

Public key: https://www.eff.org/files/2016/11/27/key_jmalcolm.txt
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