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Biography of Speaker
Roderick Abbott is a member of ECIPE’s Steering Committee and Advisory Board, and was a Deputy Director General of the World Trade Organization until late 2005. Prior to his position in the WTO, Mr Abbott was the Deputy Director General of DG Trade in the European Commission and Ambassador to Geneva.
In a 40-year career with the Board of Trade, London, and later (since 1973) with the EC Commission, Roderick Abbott has been involved in almost every aspect of multilateral trade policy, with particular emphasis on negotiations and trade disputes.
Before joining the WTO secretariate, he was Ambassador/Head of EU Delegation in Geneva from 1996 to 2000. In that capacity he has attended each of the four WTO Ministerial Conferences so far, from Singapore to Doha, and he was heavily engaged in the work of the new WTO Dispute Settlement Body, especially some of the important early cases such as the EC banana import regime.
During the 1990s and the Uruguay Round he was a member of the Commission steering group, with oversight of the EC negotiating positions across the board, and in the final stages was the lead negotiator for the tariff negotiations. He presented the first three Trade Policy Reviews of the EC in the period 1991-95.
During the 1980s he was regularly a participant in QUAD meetings of Trade Ministers, and attended the GATT Ministerial meetings in 1982 and 1984. He was lead Commission negotiator for the GATT aspects of EC enlargements in 1981 and 1985 ( and again in 1995). He was Commission representative on the OECD Trade Committee, later also in the ECSS, and attended the UNCTAD conference in Belgrade, 1981.
He was a participant in the Tokyo Ministerial meeting that launched the Tokyo Round in 1973 and during the negotiations (1975 to 1979) was attached to the EC delegation in Geneva, with special responsibility for non-tariff barrier agreements, quantitative restrictions and for negotiating new rules on safeguard measures.
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How To Revive The Doha Round With Some Chance of Success