CTEI Geneva Speaker Series

After more than a decade of arduous negotiations to improve the text of the Agreement, to set the basis for expanded coverage, to further eliminate discriminatory measures and to provide for more transparency, the Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) parties have agreed to conclude the talks at ministerial level, at the December 2011 World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference. After an intensive legal review, this decision has now been confirmed by GPA members on March 30.

The conclusion of the GPA negotiations will certainly have wide-ranging effects. It will enhance the openness of markets, create growth and employment, promote efficient and effective management of public resources and help tackle corruption by fostering good governance. All these developments are particularly relevant in the current period of economic, financial and fiscal crisis.

Some observers see in this Agreement a silver lining in the cloud of the developments towards an extended multilateral system of the WTO. In this context, the GPA could contribute as a new supporting pillar to the multilateral trading system, which is currently suffering from the Doha Development Agenda stalemate. It is hoped that by the dynamics which the revised GPA will set in motion, its underlying ideas and principles will reach more and more countries, and that the GPA could therefore be multilateralized gradually.

 

Mr Nicholas Niggli, is Counsellor and Deputy Head of the WTO Division of the Permanent Mission of Switzerland to the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA). In 2011, he has been part of the restricted team of Swiss negotiators / diplomats that successfully mediated between Russia and Georgia, permitting the latter to join consensus on Russia's Accession to the WTO. He was also Coordinator and Vice-chairman of the organizational Host-country Task-Forces of the 2009 and 2011 WTO Ordinary Ministerial Conferences in Geneva.

For the last five years, Mr Niggli acted as the Chairman of the GPA, bringing this Agreement to a conclusion at the recent WTO ministerial conference in Geneva in December 2011 and leading the legal verification process to its conclusion in March 2012. In 2009, he did complete a diplomatic mediation between China & Taiwan, which permitted the latter to accede to the GPA. He does also currently supervise the accession negotiations to GPA of China, Jordan, Ukraine and Georgia, amongst other. Since 2007, Mr Niggli acts also as the Chairman of the World Trade Organization Pension Plan Management Board. In that capacity, he has been instrumental in preparing and successfully negotiating a major administrative reform, including the increase of the normal retirement age from 62 to 65 for staff in the WTO.

Mr. Niggli holds a D.E.A (Diplome d'Etudes Approfondies) in economic history from the Universities of Geneva, Switzerland & Aberdeen, Scotland (1999) and a D.E.A. in international relations at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland (2001). His academic research has been focused on international trade, international law, negotiation theory, diplomatic, economic & social history as well as cultural diplomacy and intercultural behaviour.

A passionate chess player, Mr. Niggli is also a keen cyclist, mountaineer and trekker having crossed parts of the Himalaya Range on foot. He has a special interest for classical court music from India, Persia, the Ottoman Empire, the Middle-East, Central Asia and Mali, masks from Sub-Saharan Africa, Papua New Guinea and Aboriginal Australia as well as photography.