Milestones of the ACWL
Inauguration of the ACWL: Speech delivered by Executive Director of the ACWL, 5 October 2001
Inauguration of the ACWL on 5 October 2001
Speech delivered by the Executive Director of the ACWL, Frieder Roessler
Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,
I would like to begin by thanking all the people whose idealism and hard work made the creation of the Centre possible. I believe that two of them deserve particular credit.
There is first of all Claudia Orozco from Colombia, who conceived the idea of international legal assistance, developed the original proposal and helped negotiate the Centre’s Charter. It is thanks to her intelligence and imagination that this Charter places a bold concept into an institutional and procedural structure that ensures its efficient implementation. In my view, the Centre’s Charter is a masterpiece of checks and balances. It gives the Centre financial independence by creating an endowment fund of close to twenty million Suisse francs but subjects it at the same time to close budgetary scrutiny by its Members. The Centre’s fees for its services are set at levels sufficiently low to ensure that also poor countries can assert their WTO rights but also high enough to ensure that the Centre’s services are not wasted. The least developed countries are entitled to the services of the Centre without being Members of the Centre but are nevertheless represented on its General Assembly and Management Board. All these subtle compromises are the result of Claudia’s admirable capacity to combine her vision with a realistic assessment of how it can be made to work in the real world.
I would also like to pay tribute to Otto Genee. As Chairperson of the Preparatory Committee, he made sure that the Centre could immediately start its operations when the treaty establishing it entered into force on 15 July 2001. It was thanks to him that only two days later the General Assembly could adopt staff rules, financial regulations, a budget, rules of procedure and a seat agreement and that it could also appoint all the officers of the Centre. Less than two weeks after the entry into force of the Charter I started working on an Appellate Body submission in furnished premises with Natacha Zofka as office manager. I do not believe that there have been is another international organisation that was operational as soon after its establishment as the Centre. We owe this achievement to Otto.
Members of the Centre have requested the services of the Centre in four WTO dispute settlement cases and a fifth request is forthcoming. This leaves no doubt that the Centre is responding to a real need. We need badly staff to deal with this work load. I am happy to report that the Centre’s Recruitment Board has just decided, after interviews and written tests, to offer positions to three highly motivated and competent lawyers from three continents. The users of the Centre will therefore shortly be able to seek legal advice from altogether four experts in WTO law that have all had hands-on experience in WTO law.
I believe that the Centre should remain a relatively small organisation and rely on outside expertise whenever the demand for its services exceeds its capacity to provide them. This will ensure that the Centre remains flexible and that it can respond quickly to changing needs of its users. The need to outsource may arise from large variations in the demand for its services, from conflicts of interests or from a lack of expertise. If two countries of ask for assistance in the same case, the services provided to one of them may have to be provided by outside lawyers. The Centre might outsource complex intellectual property rights cases if it does not have an expert in this field on its staff. It might also decide to ask the law firm that has followed an anti-dumping or countervailing duty case under domestic law to handle the WTO aspects of that case. How the outside lawyers should be selected and what their relationship with the Centre and its users should be, still needs to be determined by the Management Board.
The Centre may finance not only the services of legal experts but also those of technical experts. Its founders have created a Technical Expertise Trust Fund to help defray part of the costs of technical expertise to prepare the underlying technical dossier in fact-intensive dispute settlement proceedings. The Trust Fund is to be financed by donor governments and intergovernmental organisations and will therefore be operational only after pledges by donors have been received. I very much hope that such pledges can be made soon because one Member of the Centre has already indicated that it may require such technical expertise in a forthcoming WTO dispute settlement proceeding.
One of the tasks of the Centre is to provide training on WTO law, in particular on the WTO dispute settlement procedures. Such training is also provided by the WTO, the UNCTAD and other organisations. The Centre should in my view avoid duplicating the work of others and not offer services others can provide more effectively. In the wide world of technical assistance, the Centre will have to find a niche not occupied by others. I believe that the Centre’s comparative advantage will be its day-to-day involvement in WTO dispute settlement proceedings. Its niche may therefore very well be on-the-job training of interns as well as information sessions, circulars and seminars to disseminate the knowledge that the Centre acquires through its own practical experience.
I do not underestimate the challenge that I am facing as the first Executive Director of this new institution. The Centre must operate like an international organisation, with an institutional structure and financial regulations that gives the donor governments confidence that the resource they made available are effectively used. However, the Centre must at the same time be managed like a law firm, with standards of efficiency that attract clients. My task will be to help minimise the Centre’s administrative burdens and maximise its output of services. The Centre is part of the WTO’s dispute settlement system, which would lack credibility if a WTO Member’s access to it depended on its legal expertise or resources. However, the Centre must also remain independent of the WTO and its Members if it is to fulfil its role effectively. While I recognise the challenges that the Centre is facing, I am confident that it will soon be perceived by all as an indispensable institution playing a constructive role in the WTO legal system.