CPTPP: A long but mild complaint about the transparency and accessibility of CPTPP records
A side project I’m involved with has recently required me to try and get across the work done in the various bodies created by the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). In a better world this would involve searching one comprehensive database that hosts all of the records and decisions of the CPTPP Parties and their committees. However, unlike the World Trade Organization (WTO) and its document management system, this doesn’t exist for the CPTPP or most trade agreements. Instead these agreements generally take an ad hoc approach to sharing their records, which can make it difficult to get a complete picture of what is being done and properly analyse this work over time.
The issues this creates are particularly obvious for the CPTPP given its broad membership and the fact that different Parties take different approaches to their publication of CPTPP records. In what will likely be one of the more niche posts on this Substack, this post is a long (but mild) complaint about CPTPP document management and recording sharing. In particular, I have looked at the CPTPP legal texts, CPTPP Commission decisions and reports, and the work of the CPTPP Committees, to see how easy these are to access.1 I found that properly following CPTPP implementation (or searching CPTPP records) requires jumping across various government websites and often knowing specifically where to look. As such, I humbly suggest that a small investment in centralising this information into one authoritative location would provide a big improvement for transparency and accessibility.2
I should also say I’ve focused my searches on Australia’s, Japan’s, New Zealand’s and Singapore’s websites.3 Apologies to any other CPTPP Party that maintains a proper public database of these records.
The CPTPP’s legal texts
Beginning with the texts that make up the CPTPP itself, the core CPTPP legal texts are generally available online from most of the Parties. New Zealand also hosts the texts as the agreement’s depositary.4
Interestingly, it appears that only New Zealand hosts the TPP-era “Note on Interpretation of Like Circumstances”, which explains the Parties’ understanding on what ‘like circumstances’ means for the purposes of the Investment Chapter’s non-discrimination provisions. I assume this was a particular interest of New Zealand, which is why it has published the Note online. This does mean, though, that you may not be aware this even exists unless you’ve browsed New Zealand’s CPTPP webpage.
Apart from the legal texts that apply to all CPTPP Parties, there are also a range of bilateral side letters that were done in association with the signing of the CPTPP. For example, there are letters that bilaterally disapply ISDS, set out specific agreements on things like quota administration, or set out common understandings on compliance. These side letters do not appear to be accessible at one, central location. Instead, each Party has published only the side letters that it is party to. This is understandable - why should Australia host a side letter that is only between Japan and Chile - but it also makes it more difficult to get a full picture of the precise balance of rights and obligations that actually exist between all CPTPP Parties (not to mention to assess any interpretative implications).
On the whole - as you would hope - the accessibility of the CPTPP’s legal texts is not terrible. But even here the decentralised approach to publication begins to create some limitations to properly understanding the agreement.
CPTPP Commission and Committee documents
In addition to the CPTPP legal texts, after almost five years of being in force there are now a range of documents being produced on at least an annual basis by the CPTPP’s various bodies, in particular the CPTPP Commission and the CPTPP’s Committees. In my review, each Parties’ online publication of these documents has been variable, and even finding where the relevant documents are hosted by each Party sometimes requires some effort.5
The CPTPP Commission
For the CPTPP Commission, each Party seems to publish its reports and decisions in different ways - often as part of a chronological ‘news’ webpage - making it difficult to search or follow these properly.
Gaps in each Party’s disclosure of Commission documents appear to be largely inadvertent as it is not clear why some documents are published by some Parties but not others. For example:
The Second Commission Report (CPTPP/COM/2019/REPORT) is published by New Zealand, Japan and Singapore, but is absent from Australia’s CPTPP webpage.
Japan published the Third Commission Report (CPTPP/COM/2020/REPORT), Fourth Commission Report (CPTPP/COM/2021/R001), and Fifth Commission Report (CPTPP/COM/2021/R001).6 However, these but do not appear to be available on Australia’s, New Zealand’s and Singapore’s equivalent CPTPP pages.
Australia and Japan published a decision of the Fifth Commission to establish a Committee on Electronic Commerce (CPTPP/COM/2021/D002), while New Zealand and Singapore have not.
The Sixth Commission Report (CPTPP/COM/2022/R001) is published by Singapore, but not by Australia, Japan or New Zealand.
There also appears to potentially be a decision of the CPTPP’s Seventh Commission from 2023 that I can’t find anywhere online. While the Commission’s decision on the United Kingdom’s accession is CPTPP/COM/2023/D002, none of the examined Party websites publish CPTPP/COM/2023/D001. This could be a document numbering issue, or it could be a restricted decision deliberately not being made public. The lack of a formal document management and publication system makes it difficult to tell.
The CPTPP Committees
Moving to the CPTPP’s Committees, the situation is arguably worse. The practice appears to be that reports and documents issued by CPTPP Committees are published by whichever Party is CPTPP Chair at the time (the CPTPP Chair rotates on an annual basis).
This results in needing to jump from Japan to see what the Committees did in 2021, to Singapore see what happened in 2022, and to New Zealand to follow the 2023 developments. I’m not sure if the bodies didn’t issue reports in 2020, or if I can’t just find them on Mexico’s CPTPP webpage. But in any case, all of this makes it more difficult than it should be to follow what these bodies are actually doing.
Each of those pages also takes its own distinctive approach to providing the information. Japan has a fulsome list of CPTPP-related events in each year, including its own bilateral meetings and summaries of each Commission meeting. New Zealand has its own meeting summaries for each individual meeting that it hosted while Chair. While Singapore just appears to list the formally agreed documents.
A good example of the disparity this can create is from the United Kingdom’s accession to the CPTPP. While Japan’s Cabinet Secretariat published the reports of the Accession Working Group (in 2022 and 2023), these are much more difficult to find on other Parties’ websites. The reports themselves are largely anodyne but having them would have enable interested observers to keep track of the accession negotiations and are also potentially of some interest to current accession candidates.
Does any of this matter?
None of the above suggests major failings by any CPTPP Party or deliberate hiding of critical documents. There is no legal requirement within the CPTPP that these documents be made public. There are also likely to be a range of informal or sensitive documents that Parties should not be required to publish. My point in setting out all of the above is not to criticise the approach of any CPTPP Party or the public servants tasked with maintaining these websites (most of which just aren’t designed to host a proper records database).
Instead, what I hope the above shows is that an ad hoc and informal approach to document disclosure and records management under these trade agreements has downsides. It also, perhaps, isn’t appropriate for a plurilateral agreement that is aiming to be the key institution for trade discussions in the region. Indeed, the lack of transparency and accessibility of CPTPP documents has implications both for outsiders wanting to understand the point of these agreements and also the ability of future officials to build upon past work.7
A more consistent approach to publication could also help highlight the benefits of these agreements. For example, in 2022 CPTPP Parties agreed guidelines on mutual recognition agreements/arrangements for professional services. This is a useful contribution of the agreement, however, it would seem to only be linked to from Singapore’s CPTPP webpage. Australia places it on an entirely different part of its foreign affairs website, and I couldn’t easily find it on New Zealand’s or Japan’s CPTPP webpages.
So, my modest suggestion is that a small investment in a proper online document management system that collects of all these CPTPP documents in one place, organises them and makes them searchable, could go a long way to improving transparency and public understanding of the agreement. A formal Secretariat (such as that envisioned under the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership8) might be too costly at this stage. However, even a simple website would be a useful start.
Joint Ministerial Statements are also another record that could be added to the list, but I haven’t look at these for this post.
While this post is specific to the CPTPP, I think a similar lesson applies to most trade agreements.
I should note that I was going to look more closely at Canada, but then discovered that while it does seem to host many of these documents it deletes the CPTPP Doc number from them when it does (e.g. CPTPP/COM/2019/REPORT). This makes it much more difficult to find and cross-check documents. Also, I did most of this back in July so some links/sources may have changed since then.
Although not other documents such as ratifications, which depositaries of other agreements do host.
For reference, here are the best starting points I’ve found for each Party: Australia (CPTPP text, meeting records), Brunei (CPTPP text, meeting records), Canada (CPTPP text, meeting records), Chile (CPTPP text and meeting records), Japan (CPTPP text, meeting records), Malaysia (CPTPP text and meeting records), Mexico (CPTPP text and meeting records), New Zealand (CPTPP text, meeting records), Peru (CPTPP text, meeting records), Singapore (CPTPP text and meeting records), the United Kingdom (CPTPP text and meeting records) and Vietnam (CPTPP text and meeting records).
Yes, the CPTPP formal document numbering appears to have changed over time.
It may also be that these Parties do actually host the full record of all of the documents referred to in this post and that I was just unable to find them. However, I at least checked the most obvious places on their websites and did a Google search for the CPTPP Doc number. So even if the documents are in fact available, this suggests they are not accessible enough to substantively change this analysis.
Although RCEP’s documents page seems to have only been last updated in 2019.
Thanks for the heads up Devon "while [Canada] does seem to host many of these documents it deletes the CPTPP Doc number from them when it does".
We will work to correct this oversight.