Frieder Rössler and ‘Geneva Ordoliberalism’: From William Rappard to Pascal Lamy and Beyond?

As counsellor in the GATT Office of Legal Affairs (1983–1989), director of the GATT and WTO Legal Divisions (1989–1995), and first executive director of the Advisory Center for WTO Law (2001–2015), Frieder Rössler (1939–2024) is widely recognized as having contributed to the design and successful operation of the WTO dispute settlement system. This tribute focuses on Rössler's academic contributions to what has been described as ‘Geneva ordoliberalism’. Section 1 briefly recalls the long-standing initiatives by ‘Geneva ordoliberals’ – since William Rappard's founding of the Geneva Graduate Institute of International Studies (Institut de Hautes Etudes Internationales: IHEI) in 1927 – for promoting rules-based, multilateral trading systems based on close cooperation among the worldwide institutions at Geneva. Section 2 describes some of the legal, economic, and political justifications by GATT officials (such as GATT Director-General Arthur Dunkel, Rössler, and GATT's former chief economist Jan Tumlir) for ‘ordoliberal’ (rather than ‘neoliberal’) conceptions of multilateral trade systems limiting ‘governance failures’. Section 3 concludes that the efforts of former WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy at promoting a ‘Geneva consensus’ for an inclusive ‘multilateral trading system beneficial for all’ – and the current WTO initiatives for the digital and green transformation of the ‘brown economy’ (driven by fossil fuels) into a ‘green economy’ (driven by renewable energies) – have failed to overcome the geopolitical divides between European ordoliberalism, Anglo-Saxon neoliberalism, and authoritarian state capitalism. Authoritarian power politics, ‘securitization’ of economies, and national protectionism disrupt the UN and WTO legal, political, and economic systems in ways Rössler's ‘public choice’ methodology had predicted. Without effective UN and WTO legal constraints, ‘governance failures’ and ‘constitutional failures’ tend to increase; they undermine an ordoliberal ‘Geneva consensus’ on protecting human rights and sustainable development.