[governance] informal consultation with EU

[Vittorio Bertola]

On Gio, 29 Settembre 2005 13:00, Izumi AIZU disse:
> Vittorio suggested to have IGC consultation with EU this afternoon
> and we approached them.  They are postive, but the only challenge
> is to find the time slot - 1:30 pm to 3 pm is drafting group, and
> EU will have meeting with like-minded countries at 3 pm (closed).
> We may have this consultation after that, say 4 or 4:30.
>
> We will report more when this is fixed.

This is now settled ===> from 17:00 to 17:30 in room XI <=== with Martin
Boyle from the UK (Presidency) delegation. From 17:30 to 18:00 in the same
place they will meet with the private sector. At 18:00 in the same place
there will be a (closed) EU Coordination meeting, which means that we
might want to make sure (by explicitly asking) that some of our requests
are reported to the member states then.

Now, the first reason why I thought to ask for this meeting was to
establish us as a player; also, since the EU could become the leader of
the mediation, it could be very important to get their support on a few
specific points that we might want to see in the final text.

While we might want to ask for clarifications on the EU proposal (which is
what the LikeMindedGroup is doing now, before negotiating), I doubt that
that would be terribly useful, since I would guess that the only thing
that the EU can say is the text that was agreed yesterday among the member
states, and nothing more. I think it would rather be better to use the
time to make some of our points clear and ask the EU to adopt/support them
if possible.

The first and foremost one, in my opinion, is that we would like to see
some clear text in the Forum paragraph that ensures us that the forum
works like the open WGIG consultations, and not like the WSIS PrepCom. Or,
at least (as a fallback), that CS and PS would be considered as two
"delegations" that can participate to drafting groups and plenaries on a
peer basis with the delegation of one country. If this is too detailed, we
might fall back onto some more generic, but still clear, wording.

In general, the more I read it, the more I like the Canadian proposal (tnx
Robert for forwarding it). I'm not sure about asking the EU to drop their
proposed Forum paragraph and support the Canadian one instead, but we
might consider doing this.

Also, if we want, we might make a more general request that the EU
formally supports our protest and asks for us to be allowed to participate
in drafting groups, or at least discusses it; and to try to keep us in the
loop, or at least regularly ask for reactions. I know many EU delegations
would support this request, but as I understand until now, as the week
evolved, it never came so high on the list of their priorities for any of
them (included mine) to actually raise it in the Coordination meeting.

About oversight, I really doubt that CS/PS can have a real impact on this.
This will be hardly fought among governments and I doubt they will have
the willingness and patience to take into account yet more views. In any
case, we definitely want to restate our views.

Anything else?
-- 
vb.               [Vittorio Bertola - v.bertola [a] bertola.eu.org]<------
http://bertola.eu.org/  <- Vecchio sito, nuovo toblòg...


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