IV - Multilateral negotiations: the conclusion of the Uruguay Round and prior steps to negotiations on basic telecommunications

The Uruguay Round of GATT was concluded by the signing on 15 April 1994 in Marrakech of the Final Act, which summarised the results of multilateral commercial negotiations. In addition to the agreement setting up the World Trade Organisation (WTO), which replaced the GATT on 1 January 1995, this Final Act included in particular multilateral agreements on trade and goods and the general agreement on trade and services, which is a new area of multilateral trade negotiations. The special provisions for telecommunications, one of the final components of this latter agreement, generally reflects the positions advanced by France.

The services submitted by the different Member States that are party to this agreement basically involved "value-added services", which mainly are already liberalised both in Europe and in most of its partners. These services were generally considered to be inadequate to generate the real kind of exchange of telecommunications services sought during the course of these negotiations, hence it was decided that countries could, on a voluntary basis, take part in a Negotiating Group on Basic Telecommunications.

This Group, which must finish its work before April 1996, gathers the main Member States from the new WTO. It has already held several meetings which made it possible to depict the national regulatory situations based on the responses of participating countries to a detailed questionnaire. According to an opinion given by the Court of Justice of the European Communities, these new negotiations come under the shared responsibility of the European Commission and the Member States. The Commission will in particular be invited to deliver a status report to the Council of Telecommunications Ministers on 13 June 1995, chaired by France, on these negotiations. On this basis, the Council could discuss the guidelines that the Commission should support as the negotiations continue.

The DGPT, in close co-ordination with the French Trade Representative Office (DREE), regularly takes part in the work of the NGBT, which it hopes will lead to a significant improvement in the services offered within the framework of effective and comparable access to third country markets.

A range of activities in the CEPT

After the Russian Federation and Ukraine recently joined, the European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations (CEPT) now includes 42 members.

For the CEPT, 1994 was a year of transition between the plenary meeting in Dresden (July 1993) and the one planned for Weimar in September 1995. Nonetheless, there was a great deal of action on the part of the committees making up the CEPT.

ECTRA (European Committee for Telecommunications Regulatory Affairs)

The European Committee for Telecommunications Regulatory Affairs continued to develop its work during 1994 with the main aim of strengthening its role in the process of developing a new regulatory framework for the European Union as part of the full liberalisation of telecommunications services and infrastructures on 1 January 1998.

1994 saw the creation within ECTRA of a permanent office, the European Telecommunications Office (ETO). The director, Mr. Jean-Yves Montfort, is the former head of European Telecommunications Regulations in the DGPT. His mission will be two-fold:

CERP

In the postal area, the European Committee on Postal Regulations (CERP), with France in the position of Secretary General up until autumn 1994, has continued the work begun in 1992. The CERP's activity this year was dominated by preparation for the Congress of the Universal Postal Union (see above). Simultaneously, the CERP has re-evaluated its action priorities so as to give more emphasis to preparing the European regulatory framework.

Chapter III