Change of forum

Competition had a short-lived career in the WTO negotiations. It was identified as one of the four new subjects at the Singapore Ministerial Conference in 19961 and was unloaded from the agenda of the Doha Round in the aftermath of the Cancún Ministerial Conference in 2003. Whether competition will be given a second chance as a WTO subject after the conclusion of the Doha Round is doubtful. Pascal Lamy, while Trade Commissioner of the EC one of its main promoters, first seemed determined to take it on board again despite its contributory role to the debacle of the Cancún meeting. Having become Secretary General of WTO, he may now have other more pressing concerns. Above all, the worldwide expansion of competition law has meanwhile found a more accommodating forum: the International Competition Network (ICN).

This chapter will first outline what the ICN is about and then discuss which of the functions originally to be assigned to the WTO the ICN can be expected to fulfil and whether there are functions that still need to be entrusted to the WTO, possibly at a later stage. The balance, it will be shown, is clearly in favour of a continued primary involvement of the ICN. Instead of being burdened by another potentially controversial subject, the WTO should devote its considerable energies to its core functions of promoting trade liberalization, especially in the fields of agriculture, services and public procurement.