24 Jul False Transparency at the WTO
Bad news for transparency at the WTO. The United States has issued a press release announcing that a WTO panel session in the dispute between the EU and the US over trade restrictions on civilian aircraft will be made available to the public for viewing by videotape. The hearing will be videotaped and then after the panel confirms that no business confidential information was referenced during the session it will be available for public viewing.
Sounds good right? Wrong. Here’s the catch. You have to go the Geneva to watch the videotape. According to the press release, the viewing is only on the WTO premises in Geneva and only available to those individuals who apply and are accepted by the WTO.
I welcome the move toward videotaping WTO hearings and making those hearings available to the public. But I fail to appreciate why those videotapes are not posted on the Internet. It smacks of false transparency to impose that sort of restriction on the public viewing of WTO hearings.
Far better to take the US Supreme Court’s approach and allow the public to attend hearings, post the written transcript immediately thereafter on the Internet, and then make available on the Internet audiotapes of hearings that are of particular interest to the public.
Yes, and even better to take the European Court of Human Rights’ recent approach and provide a – live and then archived – webcast of important hearings, with the live translations provided by the Court’s interpreters.
I also seem to remember the ICJ providing a very similar service when the Israeli Wall case was being argued before it.
(Neither international Court seems to publish the written transcripts, though)
Would it be possible for someone to go watch the video and take a transcript and publish it? Is is there some sort of NDA involved?
Correction, and apologies: of course the ICJ publishes the written transcripts, and has always done, in the CR and the ICJ Pleadings volumes.
I still think the ECtHR doesn’t, though, although it might have done until some time in the late 80’s. But that is only a very vague recollection of some volumes I once saw in the library.