Major achievements of 2007
In October 2007 the Committee on Trade held a successful Symposium on “Trade Rules, Regulations and Standards: Different Levels of Rule-making and their Impact”. The Symposium built upon the outcomes of the 2006 Forum on a “Common Regulatory Language for Global Trade”. These events provided policymakers with opportunities for enhanced policy dialogue on best practices in regulatory cooperation, trade and environment, and trade facilitation and security.
Another activity supporting the Committee’s trade policy discussions is the secretariat’s participation in the United Nations EC-ESA Trade Cluster and, in this context, the release of a joint publication on regional trade developments and preliminary work on the UNECE’s contribution to an interagency report on Aid for Trade. Both of these have been prepared by the Trade Cluster in cooperation with the United Nations University Centre for Regional Integration Studies. The Trade Cluster is a working group under the Executive Committee on Economic and Social Affairs (EC-ESA). It was established to facilitate joint strategic planning and coordination among the United Nations agencies that are active in trade, including the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the five regional commissions.
The UNECE Multiplier Point information continued its dissemination programme aimed at facilitating trade within the UNECE region. The purpose of the programme is to reach out to a wider audience, particularly in countries in transition, to support and promote practices and methods that help member States diversify and expand trade and investments.
The network of Multiplier Points consists of private and governmental organizations, as well as not-for-profit organizations at national, regional and local levels that specialize in trade and enterprise development. The secretariat sends these organizations information on the Committee’s work and the work of the UNECE. The Multiplier Points are expected to translate into local and national languages UNECE publications, recommendations, norms, guidelines, documents and other sources of information, and distribute them to potential users. During the past year several organizations have been added to the network.
In November 2007, the Working Party on Regulatory Cooperation and Standardization Policies held an International Seminar on Product Safety and Counterfeiting. The Working Party also approved a new Recommendation on Market Surveillance and Counterfeiting. The Recommendation, entitled, “Use of Market Surveillance Infrastructure as a Complementary Means to Protect Consumers and Users against Counterfeit Goods” (Recommendation “M”), calls for Governments to use their market surveillance infrastructure as a complementary means to identify suspected counterfeit goods on the domestic market during normal market surveillance activities. This approach entails minimum additional costs and delays in existing market surveillance activities and can be a very effective addition to existing measures to combat counterfeiting.
At its 2007 session, the Working Party on Agricultural Quality Standards and its four specialized sections, adopted:
(a) Revised standard layouts for fresh fruit and vegetables and for dry and dried produce for a trial period of one year;
(b) Eleven new/revised standards (for seed potatoes, cherries, table grapes, ceps, apples, inshell almonds, dried tomatoes, inshell hazelnuts, bovine meat, caprine meat and turkey meat);
(c) Seven revised texts of standards (for apricots, cucumbers, peaches and nectarines, pistachio kernels and peeled pistachio kernels, hazelnut kernels, blanched almond kernels, and dried peaches) to be recommendations on trial through 2008.
Further, the Working Party followed up on the decision in the UNECE Reform Plan to consult with the Scheme for the Application of International Standards for Fruit and Vegetables of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to concentrate work on agricultural quality standards within the UNECE. Thus, it adopted revised terms of reference and working procedures that open up the possibility for any member of the United Nations or of one of its specialized agencies to participate, on equal footing, in the activities of the Working Party and its specialized sections. These new terms of reference better reflect the realities of global trade in agricultural products and the actual participation in the Working Party – as well as meeting one of the important requirements of countries participating in the OECD Scheme. The terms of reference were submitted to the UNECE Committee on Trade for intersessional approval and will be presented to the Executive Committee for approval in the first quarter of 2008.
The UN Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT) organized two Forums with between 230 and 250 participants in Dublin and in Stockholm to advance the work on its standards and recommendations.
At the September 2007 Forum in Stockholm, UN/CEFACT also celebrated 50 years of trade facilitation and 20 years of United Nations Electronic Data Interchange standards. This was highly appropriate because, back in 1957, it was Sweden that realized the value of standardizing trade documents. Supported by the other Nordic countries, it brought the matter before UNECE, which promptly set up a working group on trade facilitation. The successor to this group is today’s UN/CEFACT.
Over those 50 years, jointly with ISO Technical Committee 154 (International Organization for Standardization), UNECE drew up many basic standards for trade documents, all of which are still being used in international trade. They include the: Forms Design Sheet and Layout Chart; Layout Key for Trade Documents; United Nations Trade Data Element Directory; Country codes; Currency codes; Dates and Times1.
Already twenty years ago, UNECE saw that the universal acceptance of the United Nations Layout Key for paper-based trade documents and data had created a sound basis for standardizing EDI (electronic data interchange)2. In 1987, ISO approved the UN/EDIFACT3 syntax rules for EDI (ISO standard 9735); and two years later, UN/CEFACT published the invoice and order UN/EDIFACT messages.
According to a recent Forrester research report4, EDI transactions represent around 90 per cent of all electronic transactions. They continue to dominate business-to-business electronic communications worldwide, with an estimated 20 million messages exchanged every day. Between 1989 and the present, 208 UN/EDIFACT messages have been published. These messages facilitate the exchange of information in many areas including: transport; Customs; government and business tendering; just-in-time manufacturing; and finance.
Today, UN/CEFACT and its network of around 1,000 technical experts continues to build on its experience in order to support ever more simplified trade processes and the global standardization of trade and business information. New areas of work include the development of data libraries that can be used across different, evolving hardware and software technologies as well as projects to facilitate the transition from paper to electronic documents for small and medium-sized enteprises.
Major challenges for 2008
The Working Party on Regulatory Cooperation and Standardization Policies will pursue a new sectoral initiative under its model framework for regulatory co-operation (Model “L”) to facilitate trade in Equipment for Explosive Environments. The Working Party will also develop a guide/case studies for best practices in Market Surveillance.
A number of challenges await the Working Party on Agricultural Quality Standards. Work will continue with OECD on the concentration of work in UNECE. In addition, the secretariat will begin implementation of a United Nations Development Account project to help transition and developing countries to develop the capacity to implement international standards for commercial agricultural products and thus improve their trade competitiveness. UNECE, as lead agency, will work on this global project together with the other regional commissions and in collaboration with UNCTAD, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), Codex Alimentarius and other agencies.
Further, the Working Party will continue to draw up new and revise the existing standards to reflect the changing requirements of producers, traders and consumers in exporting and importing countries. It is envisaged that two or three more meat standards will be published as United Nations sales publications.
UN/CEFACT is developing a Trade Facilitation Implementation Guide, funded by the Swedish International Development Agency. The Guide will assist developing and transition economies in elaborating and implementing national and regional trade facilitation strategies based on international standards and recommendations. It will also assist countries in assessing trade facilitation implementation issues related to discussions at the World Trade Organization (WTO). The approach being taken is an innovative one that shows countries how to assess what stage they have reached in implementation and what path they should take to achieve a stated goal.
The Guide will comprise a comprehensive modular Guide to Trade Facilitation Implementation; case studies on trade facilitation implementation (two case studies for each region); training material for both trainers and participants; a website; and a CD-ROM version of the Guide and related material. During 2008 a pilot workshop will also be held to test the effectiveness of the Guide.
Input to the Guide’s content will be provided by the core members of the Global Facilitation Partnership which include, in addition to UN/CEFACT, the World Customs Organization (WCO), UNCTAD, UNIDO, International Chamber of Commerce and the World Bank. In addition, input will be received from a country reference group consisting of representatives from target countries. The first group will ensure that the main tools and techniques for trade facilitation implementation are included in the Guide and the second will ensure that the Guide meets the needs of a range of countries.
UN/CEFACT also has challenges to face in meeting the increasing demand for its next generation of electronic business standards, and particularly harmonized data definitions (core components), as well as in developing methods for giving users better and easier access to its standards.
1 Also published as ISO standards 3535, 6422, 7372, 3166, 4217 and 8601. These are downloadable free of charge from the UNECE website at: www.unece.org/cefact/recommendations/rec_index.htm
2 A detailed explanation of EDI can be found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Data_Interchange.
3 United Nations/Electronic Data Interchange for Administration, Commerce and Transport.
4 Forrester Research, Inc. Ken Vollmer “B2B Integration Trends: Message Formats”. B2B Trends 2007 series, No. 1. Ken Vollmer is a principal analyst in Forrester’s Application Development & Infrastructure research group, covering trends, issues, and strategies related to all forms of integration, including business process management (BPM), enterprise application integration (EAI), B2B integration (B2Bi), and electronic data interchange (EDI).