Thank you, Tim and Michael, for hosting this meeting.

Thank you, Angelos, for hosting the reception yesterday evening.

A warm welcome to Minister Emerson to Geneva. It is a pleasure to hear his views on the plurilateral services initiatives. We share the same interests in wanting to encourage further liberalization in trade in services, and it is good to see this plurilateral services agreement taking shape.

I would also like to welcome Panama on-board. We seem to have like-minded views over the level of ambition.

A special “thank-you” to Helen for hosting the experts meetings over the past two days, and for her comprehensive and clear report. In the report, we see convergence emerging already, in terms of the level of ambition and a possible framework for the plurilateral agreement.

I have a few comments on the framework of the agreement:

 Firstly, a GATS-based (General Agreement on Trade in Services) approach can pave the way towards the multilaterization, and acceptance by the other WTO Members. It won’t prevent us, either, from having the opportunity to go beyond GATS, to GATS-plus.
 Secondly, although our view has always been that the negative listing approach can provide more clarity and certainty, when we consider the wide range of diversity among the members of our RGF group, we will keep an open mind on what might be the best way of proceeding here – a hybrid approach.
 As to the standstill and ratchet mechanisms, we are under the impression that a higher level of ambition can be achieved if they are applied to both market access and national treatment. We look forward to the results of the technical work to help us better understand how both concepts might be applied to national treatment.
 We are positive about including new market access, covering both new bindings and the removal of existing restrictive measures.
 Multilaterization and an accession clause are essential, though we don’t need to discuss how to achieve a “critical mass” at this stage.

Two weeks ago, we received some strong messages of political will delivered by Ministers at the Global Services Summit in Washington DC, and we witnessed unprecedented support for an ISA (International Services Agreement) from governments, academia and industries alike. We must use that momentum to help promote the ISA and realize our goal as early as possible.

Having a mandate is very important. We are all serving our political masters. We strongly urge that everything possible be done now to get that mandate, and sooner rather than later. In the process, inclusiveness and transparency are principles that must be preserved since we all share common ownership in the final outcome.

2013 would be a good time to launch the negotiations. That means only three months left in front of us. Therefore, we need to speed up the mapping discussions. Let’s roll up our sleeves and get to work!

Thank you very much.