The E15 engages key stakeholders – trade and investment policy makers, business and thought leaders – in policy dialogues in Geneva and around the world to explore and help validate ideas, align interests and strengthen the impetus for change.
RTA Exchange Dialogues
Breakfast on the RTA Exchange
The pursuit of integration agreements on trade, investment and regulatory coherence have increasingly become the new benchmarking ground for frameworks of cooperation in the international economy. A critical task before policymakers in 2018 is to keep a fixed eye on public policy objectives when shaping updating or developing new instruments to inspire public support and re-animate international economic integration efforts.
Leveraging RTAs, countries have been able to accelerate the pace of global integration, giving rise to a basket of innovative and sophisticated trade and investment rules in areas essential for governing the 21st century global economy and for advancing sustainable development. While discussions in the WTO have lagged behind, they have also demonstrated a promising capacity to adapt, in recent years reaching sweeping agreements on government procurement and trade facilitation, and agreeing to cut tariffs on an expanded set of IT products.
Through a systematic process of dissecting the content, dynamics and experiences of RTAs, the RTA Exchange serves as a mechanism for cross-fertilisation, harvesting lessons and best practices to improve coherence among agreements and spur progress across policymaking venues. Operating at the policy level, this undertaking ultimately aims to construct better trade and investment agreements, RTAs, multilateral or otherwise, capable of contributing meaningfully to inclusive growth and driving progress on sustainable development agendas, whilst contributing to effective coherence in global economic governance.
This informal breakfast will convene a small group of experts, practitioners and trade delegates in order to stimulate an interactive discussion aimed at: 1) evaluating markers for steering the trajectory of trade policymaking in 2018; and 2) examining how the RTA Exchange can best contribute to negotiation processes and mobilise the undertaking’s process to ensure that key constituents, including IGOs, trade policymakers, business, are able to derive optimal benefits.
Attendance to this event is by invitation only.
