WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy meets legislators at The House of Parliaments: "A no or a yes to international accords is a bit like an atomic bomb, it limits the margin of involvement".

On 23 June,WTO Director-General, Mr. Pascal Lamy, briefed the Steering Committee of the Parliamentary Conference on the WTO (organized by the IPU and the European Parliament) on the current state of WTO negotiations. Mr. Lamy said that the role of parliamentarians in implementing legislation as a follow-up to commitments made by Member States "clearly makes parliamentarians crucial partners of international trade negotiations and more specifically of the WTO, which is the predominant legislation in world trade, since bilateral trade treaties have to comply with standards which are set in the multilateral system".

But the WTO Director-General also said that there were areas where frustrations remained and where improvements should be made. "There is an obvious divergence in the way parliaments deal with international trade. Some parliaments play a determining role in the positions their governments adopt at international negotiations and can call for amending or changing negotiating positions; others do not enjoy such a broad role. Some parliamentarians only step in at the end of the negotiations, delivering either a "no" or a "yes" to international accords. And while that role is extremely powerful, it is a bit like an atomic bomb, it is "either or", and it limits the margin of involvement".