12
Examination of witness
Pascal Lamy.
Q52 The Chair: Good afternoon, everyone. I am extremely pleased to welcome Mr Pascal Lamy to this committee. As you know, the International Agreements Committee monitors all of the treaties and agreements into which the UK enters. We are currently doing a specific inquiry on what we call “trade in a turbulent world”. Many perceptions of free trade, the acceptance of multilateralism and so on have clearly been eroded over time—specifically, in the past two years or so—and direct changes from nations across the world that assumed that multilateralism was set in stone, including our own, are now looking to distort that.
Our questions are around the future of multilateralism and how the UK should react; and, secondly, how the UK can use different trade mechanisms, such as MoUs, bilateral agreements or less formal agreements to ensure that we can trade globally. We want to look at the ramifications in relation to our ability to scrutinise proper agreements and whether they are the sorts of thing we should be doing to promote trade and economic growth.
Having followed your extraordinary career since I got involved in and became interested in politics aged 16—that is quite a few years ago now—I look on you as the father of the modern trading system. I ask you to be quite expansive in your opening thoughts, in terms of what has gone wrong in the past few years. When you retired from the WTO, you may have thought that you had created a wonderful system that would last for eternity, but the friction seems to have started almost the day after you relinquished that position.
My supplementary, more philosophical, question is: why do you think that nations fundamentally do not like free trade? I say that in the sense that everyone says they like free trade, in the same way as they say that they like going to the gym, but, when it comes down to the realities of having open economies and so on, they find it a lot harder—particularly when stresses are placed on them, as they are today, with wars and other significant issues. They relinquish their adherence to the principles of free trade and multilateralism. Did you see that as far back as when you started in the European Commission, and do you see that going forward? Again, we welcome you hugely and look forward to your responses today.
Pascal Lamy: Good afternoon, everybody. Thanks for inviting me to this discussion and for the small list of big questions that you sent me. If it is okay with you, I will take them not exactly in the order you suggested; I will look at the UK side of things at the end, after we have looked at the global frame, and maybe regroup one or two questions.
I will start with the big picture. You are absolutely right: the world trade scene now looks very different from what it was 10 or 20 years ago, when I exercised various institutional responsibilities in that field. What has changed? Overall, what has changed is the balance between geoeconomics and geopolitics. Since the 1980s, we have been living through a period of rapid globalisation where, for some time, geoeconomic developments, views, beliefs and achievements have superseded the normal bias of geopolitics and turned into tensions, rivalries and conflicts. Some thought that this was the end of history and that the benefits of geoeconomic integration would for ever balance the evil sides of states as cold monsters.
What factors have changed this balance? The main underlying factor is the growing geopolitical and geostrategic rivalry between the US and China, which has permeated their views of what opening up trade brings in terms of benefits and challenges. We have also had episodes such as Covid, which revealed the fragility of a number of supply chains, which were the way in which globalisation expanded in connecting production systems through not just end products but components. In terms of the balance between “just in time” and “just in case”, “just in time” used to be the priority but, in a number of cases, it is now “just in case”.
There are also a number of social impacts of rapid globalisation, at least in the western world, which have impacted the ideological sense that opening up trade was the way to go. Not everybody was 100% convinced of that at the time, but there was a large consensus—notably, it is now dented; in my view, that is unsurprising—in a place where the social system that buffers the Schumpeterian impact of the Ricardian division of labour, as in the US, is pretty weak.
Of course, we also have other developments that play in different directions. The main one remains technology, which has always reduced the cost of distance in human history. We have now reached a stage where the cost of distance is at zero with digitalisation, which plays in a way that formidably favours the international exchange of data, services and value addition. There are probably a few million Indian doctors who are now ready to enter the global market of telemedical diagnosis, but there is a much more fragmented regulatory landscape on things such as data ownership, localisation and protection—not to mention the different views on where AI is going.
This has been accompanied by two dynamics that were already there at the beginning, 10 or 15 years ago. The first is the US distancing itself from the WTO and its disciplines. We all know the saga, with the US progressively putting in doubt then paralysing the dispute settlement system, which is a main instrument of the WTO. That system has been replaced by another one for those who want to work with that—not the US. Of course, there is also the extraordinary rapid development of the Chinese economy, which is now huge—I will come back to that—in today’s world trading system.
The Chair: Mr Lamy, we are trying to turn your volume up so that my colleagues and I can hear you clearly. Perhaps you could move closer to your microphone.
Pascal Lamy: My sound is now at the maximum, I think.
The Chair: Thank you; that is much better.
Q53 Lord Boateng: Mr Lamy, thank you for your evidence. The last time we met was in South Africa 20 years or so ago. In many ways, your periods in office, both in the EU and in the WTO, represented the high watermark of globalisation and the belief in it. We know from the experience of South Africa that globalisation has not risen everyone’s boat. In South Africa, the accession of China to the WTO meant, in effect, the destruction of what was a very successful clothing apparel industry. We have seen globalisation have an impact on communities elsewhere in both the developed and the developing world. As a result, people have suffered. There has been an upsurge in popularism, which is totally opposed to free trade. How do you answer the question of globalisation and the impact of free trade on disadvantaged communities? How, in any event, do we begin to rebuild confidence in the role of multilateral organisations in relation to trade?
Pascal Lamy: Thanks very much for the question. That was exactly the point I was making: the attitude vis-à-vis open trade and globalisation has been dented by the social impact of globalisation in some quarters—mostly in the United States of America, which plays a big role here.
Lord Boateng: It has also affected the north-east of England, as well as South Africa and many other countries all over the world.
Pascal Lamy: I totally agree. I am among those who believe that the Brexit vote was influenced by these developments. In a way, the UK is a bit of an exception because it has a reasonably comfortable, European-like welfare system as compared to other continents. However, we should not treat our western European/UK perception that the world has changed as the dominant view. First, we have to look at the numbers. The reality is that the volumes of international trade are still comfortably growing; this includes in 2025, which was not the best year for the geopolitics of trade, as we all know, because of the US. Secondly, overall, if you attend the General Council of the WTO, where countries are represented by their ambassadors, or a conference, where countries are represented by their Ministers, you see that an overwhelming majority of developing countries still want globalisation to go forward.
I bring this caveat or nuance to the notion that things are transforming: they are, but not to the point of questioning globally the benefits of open trade or the general political attitude, even if there some costs or vulnerabilities have appeared. We have a series of problems—I can give you a short snapshot of how I see them—but, overall, we should understand that our little western perception may not be the way in which others in the vast majority of this planet see things.
What are the problems? I will explain them in a reasonably simple, but inevitably provocative, way. Looking ahead, there are four problems. We have a small problem, which is the US. We have two middle-sized problems: first, the way in which the WTO is organised and works; and, secondly, the touchy interface between opening up trade and environmental protection. The big problem, on which I am very much focused now, is China.
In my view, the US is not a big problem; it is a US problem. If the US surrounds itself with a 10% tariff fence for the years to come, it will have to pay the price, and we will all compensate the small part of market share we lose in the US by opening more with others, which is what we are all doing. I do not see Trump as the guy who will start the revolution in globalisation and turn it the other way around, whatever he proclaims.
The middle-sized problem is long-lasting; I underlined this when I was the European Trade Commissioner and the DG of the WTO. The organisation of the WTO itself—that is, the balance between the secretariat and the members—is wrong. It does not work efficiently. There is not enough trust between the formidable technical capacities of the secretariat and the member states. As a result, agreeing on something that is inevitably of a fairly technical nature takes too much time, using procedures that are way too protracted.
The other middle-sized problem is the trade and environment nexus. The Institut Jacques Delors in Brussels, which is one of three that I co-ordinate in Paris, Berlin and Brussels, has worked a lot on this, including in tabling the first CBAM template. The problem progressively permeates both sides and, at the moment, there is no proper solution. This is a key issue because we need a clearer strategic stance overall on where opening up trade benefits the environment, notably through proper specialisation. Conversely, the increase of transport, with the fact that steel is transported and exchanged more than other commodities, is an issue. On that, I will stop there for the moment.
Finally, in my view, China will be the big problem for some time to come. That is for two reasons. The first is its importance in international trade, notably in manufacturing. China produces 35% of world manufacturing and exports roughly more than half of that, which is a huge proportion as compared to the past. As everybody knows, I am a big believer in the benefits of open trade, provided that the distribution of the benefits is done properly. This not a global or WTO issue; it is much more of a national one. I am a big believer in the benefits of opening up trade because I believe that, if I do some things better than you do and you do some things better than I do, we have a rational, Ricardian, Schumpeterian base interest in trading. I have always believed that and still do, but, if China gets a comparative advantage everywhere along the manufacturing, supply and value chain, we will have a big problem. With the notion that comparative advantage is what we have to foster in order to create efficiencies, if China has comparative advantages stemming from its political regime, its capacity to subsidise, the size of its market and the formidable investment it has made in education and innovation—stemming from where it was 30 years ago, producing T-shirts and shoes, to being at the frontier of artificial intelligence now—we will have a problem.
This problem shakes the WTO system, which is based on the notion that opening up trade is good because comparative advantages can play. The moment comparative advantages start not to play any more, the ideological basement of WTO is shaken. I speak as a European; pardon me for that. In my view, the UK is and remains part of the European system; the details of this participation, whatever they are, are important for political reasons, but, globally speaking, the UK remains a European country in many ways. We in Europe are competitive vis-à-vis all countries on this planet, including the US, but we are not competitive with China any more. This is the problem we have to cope with.
The Chair: That summary was extremely helpful and well put. We have a few more questions; we have around half an hour left.
Q54 Lord Anderson of Swansea: Mr Lamy, do you agree that, since you stepped down as director-general 10 years ago, the world trading environment has become more complex, with more subsidies, China, more protectionism and less consensus? These are the problems facing your successor. Is the WTO more inclined to help countries find a way around problems rather than confronting them? Is this forced pragmatism good for world trade? I think in particular of the recent tariff changes made by the USA. Are you among those who are inclined to think that they are incompatible with the WTO system?
Pascal Lamy: I totally agree; we have already mentioned that the world is different now. The WTO is about opening up trade and reducing obstacles to trade in a rules-based way that provides economic agency, notably to those countries that want to expand their operations by penetrating national markets other than theirs with a stable, predictable and litigable system. This is still valid. We have to consider whether the disciplines enshrined in the WTO rulebook, including the fundamental principle of non-discrimination, are still fit for purpose in a world where China has become what it has become. That is the real question for us all.
When we believe that China does not play by the rules, we can use the disciplines of the WTO to impose anti-dumping or countervailing duties. We can use a series of instruments that target either the sector or China. I am not saying that we should do this tomorrow, but we probably need to start thinking about something much more powerful: a China-specific safeguard clause. In WTO terms, that is a sort of atomic bomb. A priori, it is not compatible with the WTO rules because safeguards, which are allowed by the WTO disciplines, work only when they are erga omnes. If you want to limit the flood of imports into your own country, you cannot target one country; you target imports from everywhere. This is where there is an issue around WTO compatibility.
Again, the notion of WTO compatibility deserves a bit of thinking at a time when the fundamentals of why we have these disciplines are based on comparative advantage. There are also different ways to keep trade open, whether bilateral or regional agreements. There are softer instruments than properly negotiated, treaty-enshrined free trade agreements, but we have to look in two directions: at diversifying how our economies can benefit from open trade when our national operators exploit a comparative advantage abroad; and at looking again at the rulebook on the conditions that would be fit for purpose given what China has become.
We all know that a large part of the Chinese extra presence in export markets has to do with a macroeconomic imbalance in China, in that what it invests and produces is much bigger than its domestic consumption. Chinese leadership has been saying for 15 years, “We want to pump in more domestic consumption”, “We believe in dual circulation”, and so on. That has not worked. If you look at the latest projections for Chinese macroeconomic strategy in the next 10 years, it is still about investing and producing more, as well as moving more towards the frontier of technology. This is a political strategy that needs to be questioned, but I do not think that the Chinese leadership is ready to do that by itself; we and others have to try to create the necessary pressure on this front.
Q55 Lord Hannay of Chiswick: Pascal, what a pleasure it is to be talking to you again, many years after we started discussing these problems in quite different contexts, and to have your wisdom available to us in this study that we are undertaking. Perhaps we could move a little away from China, about which you have spoken extremely interestingly and at some length, and on to the other big problem that you identified: United States trade policy. How fundamental are the challenges faced by the World Trade Organization from the Trump Administration? Are they, to use a rather overworked phrase, existential? Or are they something that, when President Trump is no longer in the White House, we could find better ways of managing than we are just now? How resilient is the overall system of rules-based trade to the challenge of President Trump, who appears not to have studied the “most favoured nation” provisions when he was at business school? Is it possible to preserve the structures that were established in the GATT then carried forward into the WTO?
Pascal Lamy: Thanks, David, for that question; it is good to see you in good shape. I will answer your question very bluntly and frankly: Mr Trump is not a serious problem for world trade. I take the view that, for many reasons, he is a serious problem for his country, and, on geostrategic issues, when he keeps saying that Greenland should become American, he is a problem for us.
Although he believes in tariffs and believes that administering trade from the White House desk is the way to go, this is totally hyperinflated. The US represents 13% of world imports. If the remaining 87% keep their heads cool, which is what they are doing so far, we will not see a destabilisation of the system. It means de facto that the US has left the WTO—not de jure but in reality. It will not leave the WTO de jure for the simple reason: the WTO administers the trade-related intellectual property agreement, which protects intellectual property in international trade. If the US were to lose this guarantee, you can imagine the impact it would have on its economy.
That is where we are. For disputes with the US, the WTO has disposed of the dispute settlement system, although, as I have already said, another system that works reasonably well has been promoted by the European Union and a few others. So the Trump trade issue is not existential. Will another Administration not led by Mr Trump go back to where we were 20 years ago? No. We have already seen, during the Obama and Biden Administrations, a distancing of the US from the WTO, the basic reason being that its number one problem is China. It believes that, today, the WTO system does not properly address the problems that the US has with China.
I would rather be on its side here because I also believe that, today—this was not my view 10 or 20 years ago—as things stand, the WTO does not properly address the Chinese problem. I will not enter into the technical details but this is not least because the WTO’s discipline on subsidies is extremely weak—much weaker than when you look at the procedure requirements for questioning whether a Chinese subsidy is impacting your own competitive position. The US is not the problem; the way in which the WTO’s disciplines are structured is becoming a problem. To answer your question, David, the way forward is to make a number of the WTO’s disciplines more flexible.
Q56 Baroness Anelay of St Johns: Thank you, Pascal, for this session. It has been fascinating so far and will continue to be so. In listing the four problems, you mentioned the US, how the WTO is organised, the trade and environment nexus, and China. We have heard about two of those problems. What about the way in which the WTO is organised? I grew up in politics thinking that, as a body, the World Trade Organization would ensure that countries negotiate with each other and shore up how the rules-based system happens and continues, but the rules-based system is being chipped away. Members of the WTO have undertaken the option to revive the negotiation function by introducing smaller plurilateral agreements among like-minded groups, as we heard in a recent ministerial meeting. What is your view of that process? Does it have a future?
Pascal Lamy: Yes; it is part of what I call flexibilisation. The problem with the WTO is twofold. First, it does not work efficiently, as compared to other international organisations. The source of that is the mistrust between the members and the secretariat, which remains after decades. The secretariat and the DG of the WTO are not powerful enough in the system, given how decisions are taken.
Let me give an example. If the DG or the secretariat of WTO believes that there is a problem that should be fixed by negotiating an amendment to agreement A, B or C, this is just not possible. There is no authority for the DG or the secretariat to say, “Ladies and gentlemen, you have a problem. We believe that this problem can be described as such. Here are a few options to fix this problem. Now it is up to you to decide”. This simple way of working is not available. That is the first part of this.
Secondly, there is the rule of consensus, which is very much like unanimity, in a way. There are normally differences between consensus and unanimity, which is why the plurilateral way is to be open. It exists by the authority of the members, which, collectively by consensus, for some time, have allowed a plurilateral trade regime among themselves that is more open or more regulated than with others. At the moment, this has resulted in very few plurilateral agreements, although there is a well-known one on public procurement. We see that in the judicial system, and we saw it at the last WTO military conference. When countries get sick of waiting for others to agree to go plurilateral, they just do it. In my view, this is a way to transform part of the reality. If members do that, on top of what can originally be done bilaterally, I will support it.
Q57 Baroness Lawlor: Mr Lamy, I am very interested in your last answer. It brings me nicely on to my question: apart from the unilateral direction, what does the WTO need to do to promote services trade in today’s world of financial services, digital, telecommunications, professional services and mobility? What steps would you propose, and how realistically do you think could you achieve them? That is the first part of my question; I will give you my supplementary, too. Are there lessons to be learned from any of the other trade deals we have seen, such as the CPTPP, on financial services or professional services—or, indeed, the US-Mexico-Canada deal?
Pascal Lamy: That is an excellent question. Obstacles to trade in goods are tariffs and subsidies; obstacles to trade in services are regulations. If you compare goods to services, goods are more regulated globally than services. The problem in opening trade in services is reducing obstacles to trade, as always.
In this case, the obstacle to trade is a regulatory discrepancy. For instance, the real issue for the financial services trade in the EU, the UK and the US is the potential regulation of capital markets. If you look at the problem of hormone beef, the issue is the discrepancy in what is deemed healthy in the US and what is deemed healthy on our side. If it is about pesticide residues in flowers, the issue is the same. We have to move to either more regulatory convergence in services or mutual recognition, which is like regulatory convergence with an added layer of trust: “I believe that you have good reasons to do it this way. Please believe that I have good reasons to do it that way. Doing it your way or my way will not prevent us exchanging services”. That is what we did in the European Union with the internal market.
The question—it is a tricky one— is: what is the right body to lead to regulatory convergence in many areas? This is complex. Personally, I believe that more should be given to the International Organization for Standardization. It is not a well-known, first-rank international body but, in reality, it plays an enormous role in the streamlining of regulation, certification and labelling. The real question is: should we promote regulatory convergence or mutual recognition? Yes. Can we do that efficiently with the system we have today? We are not there yet; we have an infra-capacity.
For instance, I have been working for some time with the Institut Jacques Delors to see where we are on artificial intelligence today, in terms of convergence that would allow the exchange of AI-processed systems in future. We are far from having the necessary convergence capacity. There is a discrepancy between our level of globalisation and our capacity to keep moving forward because of administrative and regulatory reasons. You have the CPTPP, of course. You have the whole WTO system, and then you have regional and bilateral systems. As you go to more specifically open trade, in my view, the CTPPP is the best standard available today to cope with what you have in mind, as compared to other systems—leaving aside the internal market of the EU, of course, which is something very specific.
The Chair: We now come to our last question.
Q58 Baroness Blower: Thank you very much, Mr Lamy. You have given us a very broad perspective on all your thinking. You have talked about the fact that things will move, change and evolve—
Pascal Lamy: I am sorry, madame, but I cannot hear your sound.
Baroness Blower: Perhaps I should speak closer to the microphone. Is that any better?
Pascal Lamy: Yes.
Baroness Blower: Great. Can the current trade rules evolve to adapt to or accommodate measures such as carbon border adjustments or industrial subsidies without undermining core principles such as non-discrimination?
Pascal Lamy: That is the key question on the nexus between trade expansion and environmental protection, which I mentioned at the beginning. My answer is yes. Carbon border adjustments—I was one of the intellectual fathers of the European one when we started working on it in 2019-20—are one way to reconcile trade expansion with the problem of differentiated carbon pricing in different countries. In theory, global market capitalism has a simple solution to this tension: a common price for carbon. We all know that, unfortunately, this is pie in the sky. If we all agreed to price the externalities of our production system properly, we would not have a problem. We are not there, though, so how can this relationship be better addressed than where we are now?
This is a forum problem. The WTO has its Committee on Trade and Environment, but many developing countries believe that that is not the place to discuss these matters. If you look at the Paris Agreement, the UNFCCC system has some trade-related components, but developed countries believe that COPs are not the place to discuss trade. Hence the initiative that Brazil took at Belém last year, of which I was a part, to create a side forum that is not the WTO or the COP but an informal round table to find something of a proper balance between what is and is not allowed in the name of protecting the environment through trade restrictions, it being understood that, in many cases, open trade is good for the environment.
If Saudi Arabia stops buying its wheat on the international market, it is good news for the environment and water. It is not a one-sided equation but, for the moment, we have a forum dispute between north and south. As we know, for understandable reasons, north-south relations permeate environment governance—at least, the bits and pieces of environment guidance that we have—enormously. This is where we have to move forward. It is, again, an area where the UK and the continent share the same principles and ideological vision. There is no difference between the UK and the continent on things like this.
This may be my final point, if that is your last question. The way forward is the Mark Carney-like equation: the plurilaterals or the variable geometry in how trade regulation and trade disciplines are created and administered. Unfortunately, as the Chair said at the beginning, we are in a world that is inevitably more brutal, more turbulent and more fragmented. We have to find ways to navigate this via variable geometry and more flexible rules. That is necessary. I still believe that, overall, at the end of the day, given the benefits of trade opening up and many countries being able to exploit comparative advantages domestically, that is the way to go.
Q59 The Chair: I have a supplementary question on the dreaded Brexit, which we rarely speak of around this table. You were the European Trade Commissioner. Something went wrong in terms of the UK’s perception of the value that we got from trade with Europe. This is slightly personal but what do you think went wrong? How important is a realignment or a new framework operating with the EU, in terms of our own trade benefits? We can do dozens of bilateral treaties with New Zealand—a country I love—but the reality is that the biggest trading partner in the world is on our doorstep. My first question goes back to the philosophy of what went wrong, in terms of how you were doing your job in the sense of the belief in the benefits. Secondly, what would your advice be for this committee when looking at a relationship with European trade? I am not suggesting that it was your fault, but you know what I am asking, in that sense.
Pascal Lamy: I suggest that what went wrong was the UK’s political chemistry. I have worked in European institutions for many years, and this has been a bit of a problem for reasons that are too many to list. My sense is that the UK political system derailed at some point and that that made the difference on this unfortunate, in my view, day. Is it the end of the world? No. Again, I fundamentally believe that the United Kingdom remains a European country with European values, European systems and a European vision of the world, framed by geography, history and culture.
The question now is: how can we live in this situation without damaging the UK economy too much? The cost of Brexit for the continent has been zero, economically speaking. The cost of Brexit for the continent has been losing the clout of a major European country in the way the world is shaped, including in foreign policy or geostrategy. The first issue can be addressed, as can the second. The first issue can be addressed if the UK, nolens volens, remains aligned on the EU standards.
The big problem for the UK in leaving the European Union was not leaving the Union or the customs union but leaving the internal market. We all have to remember that we only got rid of the borders in 1992 when we had enough of a convergence in how we administer our markets to suppress borders. Inevitably, leaving the internal market was re-establishing a border, and the cost of the border is all the higher as there is the reality, or a suspicion, of misalignment in the rules you administer for goods and services.
On this, the solution—I am not saying that it is an easy equation for a British politician—is staying aligned while not having one’s say on the standard, which is not a comfortable political position. On the other side, experience has shown that, when it is about really serious things, such as Russia invading Ukraine, the fact that the UK has left the European Union has not prevented what really matters: working together in the same direction with the same willingness, in this case to defend our Ukrainian friends from Russian aggression. This is where I would put the answer to your very complex question in an inevitably sketchy way. Trade-wise, there are many simple ways for the UK to remain aligned with the European Union so that the inevitably negative consequences of Brexit are limited.
The Chair: Baroness Lawlor definitely wants to ask a supplementary question. We have two minutes left.
Q60 Baroness Lawlor: Mr Lamy, that would involve accepting EU law, which was one of the big problems for the UK. Do we take laws made elsewhere, or do we make our own laws in our own interests?
The Chair: Please answer in one minute, Mr Lamy.
Pascal Lamy: You are absolutely correct, which is why I say that the only rational, pragmatic solution—remaining aligned—is an uncomfortable political position. You have to choose between either paying the price, which is pretty high, or suffering this uncomfortable position. To be sketchy, there is a good way to do that. You can still proclaim to those in the EU who do not want things to be decided by Brussels that fox hunting is administered by UK law but not pesticide residues in flowers, the hormone content of beef or the way in which the European trading system for emission permits works, because this is where it will cost you a lot.
Baroness Lawlor: Does that include mutual recognition?
Pascal Lamy: Absolutely, if there is enough trust on both sides: “You do it your way and I’ll do it my way”. This is complex, but it includes mutual recognition in cases where there is a level of trust.
The Chair: We have come to the end of this fabulous session. I am so glad that many people on this committee have had a chance to work with you in the past. This is my first interaction with you. I am extremely grateful to you for your wide-ranging discourse on the situation that we in the UK face in terms of world trade, the US, China and so on. I extend an invitation as the Chair: if you are ever able to come and meet us in person in the House of Lords, we would be privileged to have you with us. In the meantime, on behalf of all my colleagues, I thank you very much for your time and for what has been an excellent session.
Pascal Lamy: Thank you, Chair. Many thanks for your questions and attendance. I am ready for more, for reasons you obviously know about.
The Chair: Thank you; we are much obliged. Have a great rest of your day.
