HERMINIO BLANCO IN BRUSSELS TO PROMOTE HIS CANDIDACY TO HEAD THE WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION

• If elected, the Mexican candidate’s experience could serve as a bridge in negotiations between the more and less developed countries.

Dr. Herminio Blanco, candidate to the post of Director General of the World Trade Organization (WTO), made ​​a working visit to Brussels on March 5 - 6 to meet with representatives from the Belgian government and the European institutions and to participate in an event organized by the think tank, Friends of Europe, entitled "WTO: Free Trade at a Time of Crisis."

While in Brussels, he met with the Belgian Foreign Ministry’s Chief of Staff and Deputy Director for European Affairs. He also attended a dinner with members of the European Parliament and representatives of the private sector to whom he explained his vision of the WTO and his project to relaunch the Doha negotiations in order to prevent the WTO from becoming irrelevant given the proliferation of bilateral and regional trade negotiations.

Dr. Blanco also met with the President of the European Parliament’s Trade Commission, the Chief of Staff of the Trade Commissioner, the Director General of the Trade Commission and trade experts from the EU Member States. In addition, he met with the ambassadors of the Caribbean Group and the Secretary General of the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States.

At all of the meetings, he explained his view of the WTO’s future and he discussed his long experience in trade negotiations, stressing his work as Trade Secretary, lead negotiator for the North American Free Trade Agreement and participation in the negotiation of the European Union Free Trade Agreement. He also spoke about his work in negotiating free trade agreements with Costa Rica, Bolivia and Nicaragua, and his role as advisor to Central America in its negotiations with the U.S. and EU.

At the Friends of Europe seminar, Herminio Blanco said the global economic situation has changed substantially in recent years, not only due to the financial crisis and its serious effects on global trade, but also because of structural changes in the production of goods and services and in the way of conducting business. Therefore, the WTO must be renovated in order to prevent it from becoming irrelevant.

He also explained his ideas about how to get past the Doha Round’s current impasse and President Obama’s recent announcement on negotiating a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) as a trigger for creating new interest in the WTO.