GO Blog

We are making use of the Paris Metro for reliable and inexpensive transportation and will travel through the city to Gare de Lyon, one of the main train stations in Paris, to board a train bound to Geneva this morning at 11:20 a.m. The train ride through Paris during rush hour with 22 people and luggage in tow went smoothly.

The ride from Paris to Geneva was great. We arrived in Geneva at the Cornavin station located a short walk from our hotel. After check in, we reconvened in the hotel lobby and walked to the tram stop just up the street from our hotel to our first meeting in Geneva at the World Trade Organization (WTO) at 3:00 p.m.

WTO is a lovely old building located on the lake and is undergoing some restoration. Our host Christiane Wolff, an economist with WTO assigned to the Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Measures Program, gave a tour of one of the delegate rooms and settled us into a meeting room. She gave an overview of the WTO's role as a negotiating forum, rules maker for goods, services and intellectual policy, and a place to settle disputes. She went into a good amount of detail about the SPS, which essentially sets measures to protect human or animal health, human life, animal and plant life - things like Avian Influenza, import bans, surveillance system info, pre-export treatment, HACCP traceability, processing regulations etc.