WTO Ministerial Conference to Be Held in Geneva

The new date and venue for the conference (MC12) have been chosen at the WTO General Council meeting on March 1 in Geneva.

Originally MC12 was scheduled for the summer of 2020 in Nur-Sultan. Due to the pandemic, the conference was postponed to the following year. However, because the threat of new coronavirus strains spreading hadn’t disappeared, the WTO General Council has decided to hold the conference in Geneva on November 29, 2021.

Many WTO member countries welcomed this decision and expressed their gratitude to Kazakhstan for its flexibility and readiness to act as chairman of the conference even though the venue was changed.

The issue of a new date and place for MC12 was already discussed last year, when the conference was rescheduled for June 8-11 of this year. But then, amid the health risks for several thousand expected participants from 164 member states, the meeting in Nur-Sultan was canceled and the new date and venue of it have been chosen.