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Webinar: in Conversation with Ambassador Tudor Ulianovschi: Candidate for Director-General of the World Trade Organization

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Webinar: in Conversation with Ambassador Tudor Ulianovschi: Candidate for Director-General of the World Trade Organization Transcript Webinar: In Conversation with Ambassador Tudor Ulianovschi: Candidate for Director-General of the World Trade Organization Ambassador Tudor Ulianovschi Minister of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Moldova (2018-19) Chair: James Nixey Director, Russia-Eurasia and Europe Programmes, Chatham House Event date: 02 September 2020 The views expressed in this document are the sole responsibility of the speaker(s) and participants, and do not necessarily reflect the view of Chatham House, its staff, associates or Council. Chatham House is independent and owes no allegiance to any government or to any political body. It does not take institutional positions on policy issues. This document is issued on the understanding that if any extract is used, the author(s)/speaker(s) and Chatham House should be credited, preferably with the date of the publication or details of the event. Where this document refers to or reports statements made by speakers at an event, every effort has been made to provide a fair representation of their views and opinions. The published text of speeches and presentations may differ from delivery. © The Royal Institute of International Affairs, 2020. 10 St James’s Square, London SW1Y 4LE T +44 (0)20 7957 5700 F +44 (0)20 7957 5710 www.chathamhouse.org Patron: Her Majesty The Queen Chair: Jim O’Neill Director: Dr Robin Niblett Charity Registration Number: 208223 2 Webinar: In Conversation with Ambassador Tudor Ulianovschi: Candidate for Director-General of the World Trade Organization James Nixey Well, good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Good morning if you’re in London, good afternoon if you’re anywhere East of London, and welcome to the very end actually, of a series of discussions Chatham House has been having with all eight candidates for the position of Director-General of the WTO, to better understand their stances on the challenges to global trade. And so, lastly, [audio cuts out – 00:45] about his vision for the future of the WTO. Before I introduce the Ambassador, perhaps just a few house rules. The first house rule, ironically, is that we are not under the Chatham House Rule today. We’re on the record, and we are recording this event. It can be viewed later on the Chatham House website. If you’d like to tweet, therefore you can under the handle #CHEvents. After I have asked a few questions of the Ambassador, for the first 15/20 or so minutes, please ask questions yourself using the ‘Q&A’ function, not the ‘Chat’ or the raise hand function, they’ve been disabled, and ideally, you can ask a question yourself. If you don’t wish to, that’s fine, I will ask it for you, just let me know, but we’ll unmute you if you do. You are muted right now. But, to begin with, I will ask several questions myself, along the lines that have been done for the previous candidates who have been in this series here. Now, let me introduce Ambassador Ulianovschi in full. He has been one of Moldova’s top Diplomats for a decade now. In recent times, he has risen to Minister of Foreign Affairs in 2018 to 2019. Prior to that, he was Moldova’s Ambassador to Switzerland, which of course, also means being the key representative to all the international organisations located there, including of course the WTO. In academic terms, Mr Ulianovschi has a PhD in International Law, and he has specialised in the so-called frozen conflicts, which beset the region, which I’m personally very keen to ask him about, but really cannot here, it’s not quite on- topic, so we’ll have to do that another time. But in the meantime, Ambassador, welcome, and thank you, and let’s make a start here. Perhaps I could ask you a really general question at the outset, sir, really it’s about your overarching attitude to global trade, your philosophy for global trade, how does it engender prosperity, in your view, perhaps what are its limits, and how do you see that, sort of, delicate balance between overregulation and non-regulation? Ambassador Tudor Ulianovschi Well, thank you and thank you so much, James, for this very kind introduction, I appreciate that and always honoured to be with Chatham House and, of course, today’s conversation is important as well for the entire world, but also, particularly, for the multilateral trading system. I am strongly in favour of the word free, fair trade, and I’m a strong supporter of multilateral trade system and I believe that, in the course of its existence, the WTO has done good for its members and I’m sure that it will continue to do so. Nevertheless, having said that, I am a strong believer of the fact that any organisation in the world today needs to adapt to the 21st Century realities, and that includes the ongoing challenges, such as the COVID- 19 pandemic, but also, the financial crisis, there is a rise of protectionism measures on the national level and I believe that, overall, we do need an organisation that is a rules-making organisation that has also a mechanism on how these rules, first of all, are negotiated by a member, second are followed, and third, have a system of analysing and the cases or disputes of breaching or potential breaches of the system. And, from that point of view, I think it’s a very holistic approach and I would say to everyone that it’s better to have a system than not having a system. So, the question is not if to have or not, but the question is how would you adapt? Because I strongly believe there is a need for reform, for a deep reform of the organisation, and that is, I think, an overarching priority. 3 Webinar: In Conversation with Ambassador Tudor Ulianovschi: Candidate for Director-General of the World Trade Organization The philosophy would be that we would need to increase the level of economic development of people, because today, we have a situation where WTO, in the course of its existence, has managed to help lots of people to get out of poverty. But still, there is a big number of communities, globally, especially in the least developed countries and some of the developing members, facing with these challenges and from this point of view, I would say that the negative impact of COVID-19 has highlighted the inequalities today and WTO is more relevant and necessary than ever. James Nixey Thank you very much, Ambassador, that is a great opening statement, and perhaps I could just feed from it. You mentioned that you were a strong advocate of free and fair trade. So, perhaps just building on that, can I just ask you, do you think that free trade is always fair trade? And I mentioned something about the limits earlier, because obviously, not everybody has benefitted from the advances in global – in the global trading system, some people in some countries, in developing countries, could be said to have been moved into poverty by it. So, just tell me a little bit about where the limits are. If you were to remove, for example, all subsidies immediately, then there would be problems, there’s more – perhaps a more gradual removal of subsidies is the way forward. So, I’m just asking a little bit about the limits because, as I say, under – overregulation causes problems, but under-regulation surely causes problems as well. Ambassador Tudor Ulianovschi Well, again, if you go to the extremes, I think that it’s – it will not work either way. So, everywhere is about finding the right balance between how fast to make the trade flows free, and I think that always has been and will be for a while a work in progress for the WTO and, particularly from this perspective, I think that it’s very important to focus, or to refocus the organisation to benefit those that have not fully benefitted or have not fully integrated into the multilateral trading system. And I believe that we need to focus on capacity building on the ground for those members that have not felt or are feeling that there is a risk for opening up too fast and too soon, and not being able to deal with the competition. And from that point of view I think we need to be very careful because of the, as I mentioned, the negative impact of the pandemic and the financial crisis on the major industries. And I’m not saying only about the local value chains in goods or trade, but also trade and services and, from the same point of view, I think we need to focus the work of the organisation to better communicate the advantages, while also understanding the limits of its activity, because we have also the national governments that have their own national sovereignty. And from that point of view, the organisation needs to strengthen the capacity of the LDCs particularly, but also, to encourage those that have various regional formats of co-operation and/or agreements that the benefits are multilateral and everyone benefits from any regional or plurilateral dimension, based on the most favourite nation, for example, principle for the LDC members. And I would strongly be in favour of refocusing the work of the organisation for supporting the MSMEs, and SMs, the micro, small and medium enterprises, because in the vast majority of the WTO members, the SMEs and MSMEs comprise more than 90, sometimes 95/97% of their economy.
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