The role of the Director-General and Secretariat: Chapter IX of the Sutherland Report

Extract

Chapter IX of the ‘Report of the Consultative Board on The Future of the WTO’ concerns ‘The role of the WTO Director-General and Secretariat’. The report generally expresses concern that the WTO secretariat, although ‘highly skilled’ and ‘well-regarded’ has become ‘more timid’ and passive than in the past, and that the ‘mutual confidence’ between delegations and WTO staff has declined. The report finds that the Director-General has become more of a ‘spokesperson and marketing executive’ for the organization than a leader who represents a driving, proactive force in the shaping and brokering of trade negotiations, as compared with the past where Directors-Generals ‘were sometimes regarded virtually as spiritual leaders of the system’. It warns that the costs of such a trend will be ‘lost efficiency’ and a loss of intellectual leadership.