Let me first say how honoured I am to be your host today, and to open the academic year of the School of Public Affairs.

It has not been that long since I taught myself in this institution. But between last academic year and this new one, my personal stage has undergone some slight changes in scenery. I am therefore especially grateful to have been given today this opportunity to go back to more theoretical thoughts. I’m deeply convinced that no sound public action can be taken without a relevant analysis of its subject matter and of the global landscape in which it operates.

Regarding today's topic, the WTO, can, in my view play an important role in global governance. It’s not a sort of inversed Groucho Marx syndrome that I’m expressing here : it’s not because I’m the new DG of the WTO that I’m pointing out its very peculiar position in the actual global governance system! It’s actually a thought that I've been publicly expressing for years, and that I formed in my former position as the European Commissioner for trade, negotiating for the EU on the multilateral trade stage.

Now, turning to our subject of global governance, I’ll try today to sketch for you the reasons why we need it more than ever, and how we should think about it if we are really willing to build it.
 

  
PART I. DIAGNOSTIC

Globalization ?by which I mean the growing interdependence of all the people on the planet as the distinction between ‘near?and ‘far?becomes blurred ?now affects every dimension of our societies, not only the economic dimension. Globalization has brought several additional positive aspects: it has enabled individuals, corporations and nation-states to reach further around the world, faster, deeper and cheaper than ever before, and the world to reach into them in the same way.

But the global nature of an increasing number of some worrisome phenomena –the growing shortage of energy resources, the destruction of the biosphere, the spread of pandemics, the volatility of financial markets, and the migratory movements provoked by insecurity, poverty or systemic political instability ?is also a product of globalization. Globalization is already a reality, but it is also an on-going process that creates a new need for efficiency that cannot be met by nation-states alone. The new issues raised by global conflicts and crises, by political developments and by the crises that appear to be affecting the planet’s governments, make it apparent that we need to contemplate new forms of governance.

That there is a widening gap between global challenges and the ways of working out solutions is no longer in dispute today. One of the most important consequences of this gap is, in my view, the feeling of dispossession which is spreading among the citizens of this planet. Dispossession of their own destiny, dispossession of the means to act on an individual level as well as at a national level ?to say nothing of the global one.

Let's be very clear here: it’s not globalization which creates this feeling, it’s the absence of the means to tackle it appropriately. It’s the absence of governance at the required level, the global one. The feeling that you can’t do anything and that your own government can’t really do more has two impacts: first, an immediate backlash on the confidence and trust that you put in your national system of governance. Second, this feeling of dispossession is a direct threat on the idea that you can influence your future. What happens next is that feeling such a dispossession increases the anxieties towards the future. The future becomes an anxiogenic figure, because citizens are not convinced that there is a captain to pilot their plane. It represents a direct blow to the idea of anticipation. And anticipation, which is based on a comprehensive view of the systemic elements which are at the making of our societies, is at the very heart of the idea of progress, not to speak about democracy.

The absence of governance, to put it simply, destroys the very idea of progress, which has been the basic energy of the transformation of human societies since the XVIII century and which has been the founding principle of democracy. Without this idea, it’s back to the rule of the jungle.

To address the global questions, problems, threats, fears, at the appropriate level, we need more governance at the global level. Which is not at all saying that we need a world government, as I will now explain.

  
PART II. FACED WITH GLOBALIZATION: WE NEED FURTHER GLOBAL GOVERNANCE

What do I mean by global governance? ⁽¹⁾ For me global governance describes the system we set up to assist human society to achieve its common purpose in a sustainable manner, that is with equity and justice. Growing “interdependence requires that our laws, our social norms and values, our other mechanisms for framing human behaviour ?family, education, culture, religion to name only a few of them ?be examined, understood and operated together as coherently as possible so as to ensure the basis of our effective sustainable development? It involves thus necessarily, the recognition of the role and responsibilities of new actors, openness of processes, authentic and effective participation, accountability of those acting, and coherence. ⁽²⁾

How can the interdependence of our world be better managed? In my view, three elements must pave the way of this research:
First of all, values. Values allow our feeling of belonging to a world community, embryonic as it may be, to coexist alongside national specificities.
Second, we need actors who have sufficient legitimacy to get public opinion interested in the debate who are capable of taking responsibility for its outcome and who are held accountable.
Third we need mechanisms of governance that are truly effective and which can, inter alia, arbitrate values and interests in a legitimate way.

I am not proposing an institutional revolution but, rather, a combination of global ambition and pragmatic suggestions. Building global governance is a gradual process, involving changes to long-standing practices, entrenched interests, cultural habits and social norms and values.

  
WE NEED TO ADDRESS “VALUES?

If we wish to construct a collective dimension, we have to want to live together. Can, in other words, diversity be transcended in such a way as to allow the ‘community of nations?to become, thanks to a series of political measures, a ‘global?community?

Global collective values, common public goods

Globalization brings into contact peoples, societies and creatures that have made, through history, choices that are sometimes similar, sometimes very different from one place to another one. A debate about collective values, regional or universal, is then a necessity. There are already steps taken into this direction: for instance, there is a quite large agreement between the nations on the right to health and education, or core labour standards. And there is an awareness of the fact that on questions like environmental goods or international migrations, purely national responses are no longer adequate.

This debate on shared values may allow us to define the common goods that we would like to promote and defend collectively at the global scale. The systemic nature of those goods requires very different handling than other objects of international cooperation. These collective world goods provide the basis for world governance. A sort of “Global Democracy?

As I'll develop later on, to me the multilateral trade system is in itself an international public good.

Once we have identified and agreed on core values, we need to ensure that authentic actors are involved in this process.

  
WE NEED AUTHENTIC ACTORS

To ensure legitimacy, we need a common and representative debating chamber because there can be no collective appropriation of political will without it, the basis of democracy. We will not succeed in creating a real international ‘community?unless we make a determined effort to create such an arena for dialogue and politics.

The first, and relatively simple, steps that we have to take towards a more balanced representation of the world would be to encourage the establishment of parliamentary structures at the international level in order to bring together representatives from various national parliaments, and to admit representatives of civil society to an economic and social council capable of functioning effectively.

We have also to ensure that authentic interests and the interests of most people are taken into account in our management of international relations and the way we operate our regional and global systems of values, rights and obligations.

The interdependence that unites us can be reflected at several levels of human activity. The problems and difficulties facing us may be local, regional, or global, as are the interests to be defended and protected. Consequently, the representativeness of the interests concerned should correspond to the human field specifically affected by globalization and its operational tentacles.

In this context, the various voices and groupings may ?depending on the issues or problems involved ?may be horizontal, or sometimes vertical. For example, while some problems are fundamentally global ?certain environmental phenomena for instance ?and require the participation and representation of horizontal or global actors, other human difficulties and the negative consequences of globalization are more circumscribed. These issues call for the participation of actors representing smaller interests which, although perhaps more specialized, are every bit as important to maintaining the universal balance if we believe in justice and human equity. I am thinking here of issues such as violence in the cities, inland water irrigation problems, etc., which can be better handled by the local authorities. And though it is they that must act and be represented, this does not in any way obviate the need felt by these vertical actors to act jointly and to share, nor does it detract from the importance that the higher echelons of the international or global order should accord them.

Once we have made sure that authentic actors will participate in the debate over which values to protect, we need to ensure that we have an appropriate mechanism to arbitrate disputes over values.

  
WE NEED MECHANISMS OF REAL GOVERNANCE

This puts us on the ground of international institutions ?and they all have problems.

Autonomous decisions and the right to take initiative by international institutions

The further you are, the less legitimate you are: distance reduces legitimacy. For democracy to be the organisational principle of global powers, we need to build it and we could begin to do so with our existing international organisations.

International organisations have their own legal personality and therefore the potential capacity to take decisions to further the interests of the institution and its membership. But they lack the means, instruments and political responsibility that would allow them to play a more decisive role. Elements of collective trust have of course developed within the international relations system. International law has, in some cases, been able to police the brutality of state-to-state relations. Yet we cannot avoid the conclusion that suspicion is still a structuring factor in international relations. If we want to live together, we have to reduce the level of suspicion. Setting the system in motion and reducing the level of suspicion means making it possible for global institutions to take decisions and initiatives which are central to the international system.

We have to advance one step at a time and ensure there is a basic level of trust in every international organisation that can put forward initiatives, reach compromises and propose solutions. The UN Secretary-General can play that role, assuming that the permanent members of the Security Council allow him to do so. Similarly, the Directors of the World Bank have the power to kick start their institutions. So, to a lesser extent, do the Directors General of the ILO and the WHO. The Director-General of the WTO, on the other hand, does not have that power because the consensus principle ?however important in terms of the ethos of the WTO ?makes it formally difficult for him to take real initiatives.

Mechanisms for the arbitration of disputes

Globalization brings into contact peoples who have not always taken the same social choices. And when States explain what they expect from the world-governance system, they have different priorities. There are many reasons for this: their history, their country’s level of development, the incompatible political and social projects they have drawn up, and so on. We therefore need mechanisms to arbitrate values or their effect on trade or other people's rights. We also need to arbitrate conflicts between values and between fundamental values and other types of interests. These could also be described as mechanisms that guarantee that the rules are respected, or as a form of international justice.

These systems, and we have some, do on the other hand raise delicate questions about legitimacy. What legitimacy does an expert sitting on an arbitration panel have, when compared for example with an elected representative of a sovereign state? Why should an International Crimes Tribunal be in a better position to judge a war criminal than a national court? How can national authorities be made to accept the decisions of an International Criminal Court? We need to ensure that the rules applied by those courts are themselves legitimate and transparent.

I have tried to outline some of the component of such global governance. But we do not need to start everything again. We do have elements of global governance in existing regional settings as well as in some universal systems. Let's look at two examples of those embryos of global governance: Europe and the WTO.

  
PART III. EMBRYO OF INTERNATIONAL GOVERNANCE

I am a pragmatic man and with age growing I am tired of listening to the same old discussions of Utopia. I don't want to work on yet another version of the universal polis, a “cosmopolis? which is a sort of world democratic chimera. Indeed, we are not starting from scratch. On the contrary, we have raw materials we can use. We can also capitalise on the present archipelago of world governance. Today I will refer to two sets of examples of such embryos of governance: one at the regional level, the other, at the global level. I will look at what is already in place and try to sketch how what we have in place can be used to further global governance.

  
REGIONAL GOVERNANCE: EUROPE

To outline the European paradigm briefly is no easy matter, especially in these troubled times for the European Union but it is useful to try, especially since the building of Europe is in fact the most ambitious experiment in supranational governance ever attempted. It is one of domestically sovereign nation states and, at the international level, the mutual agreement of those same nation states entering into, or abandoning alliances (or obligations) at will. The European construction has been the one of a desired, defined and organized interdependence between its member states.
What are the basic tools that have allowed Europe to stand as a laboratory for a different kind of governance is what I propose we look at for a moment. To do so we nevertheless have to keep in mind that the construction of Europe is a work in progress and has not stabilized neither in its geographical dimension, nor on its political ambition. And that construction of Europe is a specific process, which is historically taking place in Europe, but that should not lead us to do some form of “euromorphism? i.e. the temptation of ascribing universal value to what is only a part of the reality of our world.
As I said, the European Union is a desired, defined and organized interdependence. The key factor, in my view, of this very peculiar chemistry lies in the intimate mix of three ingredients: first, the political will to integrate; second, agreement on the goal being sought; and third, a machinery of procedures and institutions capable of producing and ensuring the governance of the expected results.
Will, common objectives, institutional and procedural machinery: here is the European tripod ready to walk. But those three elements, to produce the chemistry, have to be mixed together. They are so indissociable indeed that the presence of two of them leads automatically to the appearance of the third. In the catalysis of those three pillars lies the political energy that makes it work.
It’s the conjunction of those three elements that made the European Coal and Steel Community fly, in the 1950’s. There was the political will to move beyond the destruction of two European wars. To do so, European founding fathers thought up a concrete project, a concrete and common objective, that would combine the two essential pillars of the economies of the time ?coal and steel ?and create “de facto solidarities? as Robert Schumann put it. It was the strength of those first two elements (the will and the objective) that made possible the boldness of the third: the creation of a sui generis supranational institution (the High Authority of the ECSC).
Second example: The same elements crop up again to launch, in 1985, the campaign for the internal market for 1992. Here, the political will was gained through the strong support from determined national leaders (François Mitterrand, Helmut Kohl, Margaret Thatcher, Felipe Gonzalez, Giulio Andreotti, to name but a few); a precise objective, agreed upon as such : the disappearance of internal borders for goods, services, capital and persons ; and, in the name of that will and that agreed objective, once the objective had been agreed upon, a major institutional reform in that decisions on the creation of the internal market would change from requiring unanimity to being adopted by majority vote.
Third and final example, the most recent in the economic field: the euro. Here again we find signs of political will regarding a monetary union as early as the 1960s. It grew gradually stronger in response to the world monetary shocks of the 1970s. It took twenty years for this political debate ?to reach maturity, not earlier as around 1990. It took this time to recognize the limits of the European monetary “snake? the incompatibility of a single market and the free circulation of capital with independent monetary policies, and the time for all the participants to adopt monetary stability as the aim of monetary policy. But as soon as the political will and the political objectives were agreed and shared, the necessary institutional framework was brought to life in just a few months.

These three examples are I think clear proof of the existence of the tripod I referred to a while ago: an interdependence sufficiently desired and well defined to be organized. When those three elements are not solid enough ?like in macroeconomic governance or defence and foreign policy for instance ?no new political field may emerge, at the union level. But this leads us astray from the topic of our discussion today.
I warned at the outset that the construction of Europe can’t be taken as a blueprint for the construction of global governance. It shows however that only a democratic debate to share objectives and to build the political support can give birth to the appropriate global governance, and that the doses of legitimacy required are higher than what is necessary at the national level which is, I believe, an important lesson.
Let's look now at an embryo of global governance ?the WTO.

  
MULTILATERAL GOVERNANCE: THE WTO

Although international trade is only one, but the most visible, dimension of globalization, the WTO system is definitely an active player in global governance. Today I will discuss first briefly the governance of international trade which in its sophistication differs from what is after all the still rather primitive scene formed by the other sectors of international governance. The WTO contains a set of values, it involves different types of actors and it provides for procedure to arbitrate values between States and between values and trade interest. But the WTO itself is a “universal value?as it crystallizes the parameters of the multilateral trade system, which I believe, is an international public good. 

The multilateral trading system (and thus the WTO) is an international public good

Why is the multilateral trading system an international public good? Non-discriminatory trade liberalization by WTO Members has the characteristics of a global public good: everyone benefits in the medium term from the increase in efficiency that results from the removal of global distortions in prices, which encourages countries to produce according to their comparative advantage. According to Ernesto Zedillo the WTO is the only instrument that can be used to deliver the global public good of non-discriminatory multilateral trade. As it is essentially public in consumption, its benefits should accrue to all people.⁽³⁾

But we know that rich industrialized countries have drawn more benefits from the multilateral trade system than developing countries.⁽⁴⁾ This is why I always insist that the opening up of markets must produce real benefits in the everyday lives of the countries concerned ?which is only possible if we have rules that provide for a level playing field, that ensure technical capacity building, and that enable Members to improve their domestic governance so that this opening up of markets can be truly beneficial to most people. So the opening up of markets stimulated by the WTO produces benefits to many, but also has its costs, whose distribution is largely beyond the WTO's control. Hence the need to cooperate more coherently towards more effective global governance.

Let's look at how the WTO addresses values, actors and its institutional mechanisms of real governance.

  
VALUES

The benefits of market opening as a basic value

The basic value underpinning the WTO is that market opening is good. Market opening allows for a division of labour between countries and for resources to be used more appropriately and more effectively for production. It has been forged, to start with, as a result of observing the negative effects of protectionism on our economies at different times in recent history and in particular between the two World wars of last century. And then from observing the positive effects of the opening-up of trade in the last fifty years.

But the WTO’s trading system offers more than that. It helps to increase efficiency and to cut costs even more because of important principles enshrined in the system such as non-discrimination (trade from all Members is treated alike), transparency (clear information about policies, rules and regulations); increased certainty about trading relations (commitments to lower trade barriers and to increase other countries?access to one’s markets are legally binding). Many other areas of the WTO’s agreements can also help reduce corruption and bad government.
 

Other non-trade values

At the same time the WTO also recognizes the importance of values other than market opening and trade efficiency. Since its inception, the GATT has always recognized that legitimate government policies may justify measures which are contrary to basic GATT market access rules. Traditionally in GATT, States have the right to deviate from market access obligations to favour values of public morals, the protection of health of people, animals and health or the conservation of natural resources etc... The WTO includes in its constitution these fundamental social values.

But there is another principle of the WTO system that assists in the arbitration of values between Members and between trade values and non-trade values. Pursuant to the WTO, each Member is free to determine the values to which it gives priority and the level of protection it deems adequate for such values. This would include any societal value elected by a WTO Member. As further discussed below, the only control exercised by the WTO is whether the Member is in good faith when invoking such non-trade values or whether it is rather hiding a protectionist device. This control is exercised by the WTO dispute settlement mechanism.

  
ACTORS

The WTO is a classic international organisation where States are Members. Yet the WTO may be one of the most avant-guardiste institutions, because it is able to adapt quickly to reality; I give you two examples. First, the participation of the EC as an autonomous Member (independent from the EC member states). If de facto during the 1970's the Commission began to participate in the GATT meetings etc.. and de facto spoke for all EC states, it is only with the Uruguay Round that the European Communities became a formal WTO Member, distinct from the EC states which are also WTO Members. The legal trick was a simple footnote that stated that in case of votes, the Europeans would not have more votes that the number of States of the European Communities ?even foreseeing the expansion of the EC. So the WTO has been able to suggest solutions to deal with problems.

The WTO also has been able to adapt and adjust to the increased demands from the civil society and NGOs. The development of the WTO ?its far reaching agreements, the linking of these agreements into a “single undertaking? and the possibility of economic sanctions ?has led many within civil society to feel more directly impacted by the trading system. They claim a right to participate in the debate and in the decision-making process by Members.

Now the WTO has learned to engage civil society in a variety of different ways. Through the annual Public Symposia that it organizes, governments, the WTO Secretariat, academia and civil society all have the opportunity to interact. There are also regular WTO briefings and we circulate to Members a list of all papers submitted by NGOs to the WTO. But civil society interacts with the WTO in other ways too. For instance, members of civil society can send amicus curiae briefs (which are “friends of the court?briefs) to Panels and the Appellate Body in the context of WTO dispute settlement. This is in recognition of the importance of civil society's views.

Last month the WTO witnessed an important evolution in its dispute settlement process with its first “public?hearing. In a dispute between the US, Canada and the EC on hormone-treated beef, the parties agreed to open the doors of the WTO court house for the broader public to see. So I think that the WTO constitution is flexible and receptive enough to new realities to adapt to globalization and participate in the construction of global governance.

  
MECHANISM OF REAL GOVERNANCE

Mechanism to arbitrate values and interests

The existence of a dispute settlement mechanism confers on the rules agreed to in the WTO a particularly binding force for its Members: non-observance of the rules may give rise to litigation and the litigants are bound to accept the decision of the eminent persons appointed for that purpose. Otherwise, sanctions can be imposed, which is a considerable step to take. That change, which was brought about when GATT became the WTO ten years ago, has had the effect of raising the profile of the WTO, which is not without inconvenience.

For many critics, the existence of sanctions allows trade to take precedence over other sectors of international governance, including health, the environment or fundamental human and social rights, for example.

But it has been demonstrated that this WTO dispute settlement system has not up to now given trade policy rules precedence over other multilateral rules. Those who denounce what they see as an imbalance in governance have not been convinced. I think that on the contrary, the WTO has been quite sensitive to maintaining such a balance between trade and non-trade values.

Indeed, the WTO provides that in some circumstances non-trade values can supersede market access and trade values, provided that the governmental action is necessary to pursue the goal and the value determined by each Member and provided that the least trade restrictive measure is chosen to implement the desired value. In the WTO, in cases of disagreement among two or more Members, it is for the WTO court to adjudicate and to determine whether the measure was indeed necessary to enforce such value and whether the least trade restrictive measure to do so was chosen; and it will do so in using a “balancing test? The WTO Court has always insisted on the “importance of the common interests or values?protected by that law or regulation of that Member. The rule is “The more vital or important those common interests or values are, the easier it would be to accept as ‘necessary?a measure designed as an enforcement instrument?⁽⁵⁾

Autonomous actions by the WTO, as an international organization

Institutionally the WTO is still weak. Decisions are still taken by consensus, providing a de facto veto to each Member or at least to the most powerful ones. Formally there is not yet any secondary treaty law (droit dériv? in the WTO. Generally, obligations negotiated in Geneva must be ratified domestically. Contrary to the EU for instance, there is no WTO body that is entitled to initiate legislative change. The WTO Secretariat or the WTO Councils and Committees cannot enact regulations or other norms that would add to the original treaty or even that would implement a basic norm included in the WTO treaty. This authority is left to States alone.
Yet the WTO has put in place a few principles that recognize that the WTO is an international public good. First, in its Preamble the WTO states explicitly that while trade expansion should take place, it should do so while “allowing for the optimal use of the world's resources in accordance with the objective of sustainable development? By definition sustainable development calls for the consideration of fundamental values other than those of market opening to include, for instance, the protection of the environment, human rights and other social values.

The WTO also prohibits any unilateral action by any WTO Member. In this sense the WTO goes ahead of traditional international law that allows individual states to determine whether another state is in violation of its international obligation and to react and respond to the violation by another state with countermeasures. No WTO violation justifies resort to a unilateral retaliatory measure by a Member. If Members disagree as to whether a WTO violation has occurred, the only remedy available to them to resolve this question is to initiate a WTO dispute settlement process and obtain a WTO determination on the matter. You can see how strong the WTO dispute settlement system is. But I don't agree with a government of judges so we have to ensure that the legislative branch of the WTO becomes as efficient and as powerful as the WTO court.

A third principle was established when the WTO court decided that the provisions of the WTO could not be read in “clinical isolation?from public international law. This meant that the WTO is only part of a more global system that includes several sets of rights and obligations. There is no priority given to WTO norms over other norms. Hence a need to ensure global coherence in the interpretation and application of all values, rights and obligations.

As I mentioned, I am fundamentally convinced that the international trading system belongs to all of us ?it is an international public good. So the opening up of markets (and globalization) produces benefits, but also has its costs. And if trade opening results in a different distribution of benefits between nations, the distribution of the benefits within nations is largely beyond our control. Hence, the need to cooperate more coherently with the other international organizations working in the interests of international governance. Here too we can detect embryos of international coherence in the actions of the WTO.

This same coherence must also apply in the relationship between the opening up of markets and the measures to accompany the effects of such opening. We cannot ignore the costs of adjustment, particularly for the developing countries, and the problems that can arise with the opening of markets. These adjustments must not be relegated to the future: they must be an integral part of the opening-up agenda. This is why I have suggested that we must re-orientate the WTO towards what I called the  “Geneva consensus?

My suggestion: a new “Geneva consensus?

Market opening and globalization have two types of impacts. On the one hand, the beneficiaries are many and, more often than not, ignorant, therefore silent; on the other, those who suffer the effects of the structural socio-economic changes trade brings are acutely aware of them and that leads them to rally to preserve the threatened status quo.

Market opening, trade liberalization and the overall globalization are good and necessary for universal sustainable development and the eradication of poverty but they are not sufficient. Such trade liberalization policies must be accompanied with programmes that take into account the victims of trade opening. If one wants to prioritize development, relative weight has to be given to economic liberalization, international official aid, and the finalizing of multilateral rules.

According to the terms of this “Geneva consensus? trade liberalization is necessary, but it is not sufficient. It also implies assistance: to help the least developed countries to build up their supply and therefore adequate productive and logistical capacity; to increase their capacity to negotiate and to implement the commitments undertaken in the international trading system; and to deal with the imbalances created, as I have just said, between winners and losers from trade opening ? imbalances that are the more dangerous the more fragile the economies, societies or countries. This is the only way to ensure that the opening up of markets will produce real benefits in the everyday lives of the countries concerned. And this is only possible if we have rules that provide for a level playing field, that ensure technical capacity building, and that enable Members to improve their domestic governance so that this opening up of markets can be truly beneficial to most people.

  
CONCLUSION: WHAT CAN WE LEARN ?

1.   The first lesson: globalization involves international cooperation. We can only succeed if we want to live together and if we are prepared to work together. Carve the principle of cooperation in stone among our international laws and begin with the economy, that is the first lesson.

2.   Second lesson: this cooperation requires political will and political energy, which implies to accept the debate on the benefits and costs of cooperation. Multilateral values have to be defined together. My view then is that we need to monitor and reform globalization to serve our human, economic and social values, in line with the UN Millennium Resolution.

3.   Third lesson: political will and the negotiation of those common objectives and values require a complex institutional apparatus, within the UN system and its constellation of Satellites. We have some basis already that we need to build on.

The WTO can become a fundamental player in this global governance. But in light of its impact on individuals, we need to politicize globalization ?in other words, we need, if we want a more harmless globalization, to supplement the logic of the market capitalism efficiency of the WTO with a renewed attention to the conditions in which that logic could favour development. This is why I began my tenure as WTO DG in suggesting a new “Geneva Consensus? We have a long way to go but, as you know, I am used to this marathon rhythm. I've accepted this challenge because I deeply believe that the best way to establish further justice and equity ?and we need a lot of it ?is through more global governance.

Thank you