WORLD TRADE
ORGANIZATIONS/C/13
6 December 2000
(00-5279)
Council for Trade in Services
WTO PROGRAMME ON ELECTRONIC COMMERCE
Oral Report by the Chairman of the Council for Trade in Services
to the General Council on Electronic Commerce
At its meeting of 6 October, the Council for Trade in Services discussed the work programme
on electronic commerce in response to the invitation of the General Council  to pick up the work on
this issue where it had been left off, to identify cr oss-sectoral issues and to report back to the General
Council in December.
The Council's discussion on 6 October took as its starting-point the progress report which it
had made to the General Council on 27 July 1999 (S/L/74).  It was the general view that this report
was still an accurate reflection of  the thinking of Members on the subject, and that there was no need
to re-open or repeat what was said in it.  The progress report had identified a number of issues as
requiring further work, and Members were fully resolved to pursue these issues, but it was pointed outthat they were complex matters which would require careful consideration and that it would not be
possible to deal with them in substance before December.
In response to the request of the General Council  that the Services Council should seek to
identify cross-sectoral issues arising in electronic commerce, there was no dissent from the view
expressed by several delegations that matters related to development were of a cross-cutting nature.
However, views differed as to the nature of certain other subjects, including customs duties, theclassification of certain electronically-delivered products and certain competition issues, which were
mentioned as possible cross-cutting issues relevant to the work of other WTO bodies, such as the
Councils for TRIPS and Goods and the CTD, as well as the Services Council:  the view was expressed
that these issues were primarily related to services.  Some delegations indicated that they wished to
give more thought to the question of what in fact constituted a cross-cutting issue, while othersexpressed the hope that the General Council  might be able to offer guidance on this.
At the conclusion of this discussion, the Council agreed that the Chairman should make an
oral report to the General Council, on his own responsibility, and that Members would be informed of
the content of this report before it was made.  The report was therefore presented at the meeting of theServices Council on 1 December 2000.
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