The WTO is a member driven organization - decision making authority is vested in its General Council of national ambassadors, and is jealously guarded. The Director-General position is not clearly defined in the treaties setting up the WTO, and is not, institutionally, very powerful.
The relationship between the Director-General and the General Council came up in a recent American Enterprise Institute discussion on the WTO:
"WTO Director-General Dr. Supachai Panitchpakdi's three-year term will be coming to an end this year amid serious institutional structure problems, according to the board. With a new director-general to be chosen by the members of the WTO in the coming months, the board asserts that it is important and timely to address these challenges.
"The way the system treats its officials, its secretariat, and its director-general is nothing short of disgraceful," Jackson [John Jackson, a Georgetown University law professor] said.
Jackson explained that the mantra of the organization, that it is "member-driven," tends to be an excuse for ambassadors to "flex their power muscles and to prevent adequate operation of the secretariat and the director-general." "
Future challenges for WTO" (UPI via the Washington Times)
The panel's topic was the January "Sutherland Report" on the future of the WTO. Jackson was one of the co-authors of the report. The report devotes a chapter to the role of the Director-General and the Secretariat. Here are some extracts:
"...for some years, the mutual confidence between delegations and WTO staff has been less obvious than in the past...The deeper problem appears to be a view that, in a "Member-driven organization", the Secretariat's role must be solely one of support, not of initiative or even of institutional defense of the WTO system...
The role of the Director-General is not defined in the Marrakesh Agreemetn. Article VI(2) calls on the Ministerial Conference to appoint the Director-General and "adopt regulations setting out powers, duties, conditions of service and term of office...". aside from determining conditiosn of service, this mandate has never been fulfullied...
There is the question of the Director-General's duty to manage the Secretariat. In recent years, there has been a tendency towards micro-management by Members, particularly through the Budget Committee..."
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