Europe: WTO needs a little push to get past stalling

WTO needs a little push to get past stalling

5 August 2007 - Issue : 741


World Trade Organization chief Pascal Lamy has demanded extra efforts by members of the world trade body to clinch a new deal breaking down global trade barriers.
WTO negotiators should come back from the August summer break “ready to engage in intensive negotiations” on the Doha round, Lamy said in Geneva. Details of his intervention were also released in Brussels.
“We have already come a long way in this round, and the distance left to go is not so great, but it will require extra efforts,” he told the WTO’s 150 members.
The WTO chief said the publication earlier in July of draft texts on liberalising trade in agriculture and industrial goods had “significantly reinforced and intensified,” discussions in Geneva.
Lamy said the texts allowed for “more concrete, intense and specific” negotiations in both sectors. “It is important that everybody be fit and ready on the starting line at that time,” said Lamy.
An “extra effort” was needed to clinch a WTO deal by the end of the year, he said, adding: “It means intensive work, knowing that there are no shortcuts.”
The new WTO proposals call for steep cuts in trade-distorting US farm subsidies by setting a ceiling for such hand-outs at between USD 13 billion and USD 16.4 billion, down from the current limit of about USD 22 billion.
This is above the USD 10 to 11 billion ceiling demanded by Brazil and India but below the USD 17 billion level informally floated by the US.
The draft industrial goods agreement tabled in Geneva said developing countries should put a ceiling of 19-23 percent on their tariffs, well below the 30 percent demanded by Brazil and India.
This is the level, however, that European business groups say is necessary to improve access to emerging markets for their exporters. Disputes over farm trade liberalisation have soured the Doha talks ever since their launch in the Qatari capital in November 2001.
The negotiations, aimed at breaking down barriers to trade in agriculture, industrial products and services, were suspended last summer after the US and the EU failed to agree on measures to open up farm trade.
Prospects for a deal faded even further last month after four of the WTO’s largest trading powers - the US, EU, India and Brazil - failed to bridge differences at a meeting in Germany.
Europe’s chief trade negotiator Peter Mandelson has also been pushing for a return to the negotiating table after the talks collapsed and attempts to revive them have also stalled.