The member governments of the WTO have until July 30 to agree on a package of framework agreements in agriculture, industrial products, improved customs procedures and development matters, comments Supachai Panitchpakdi, Director General of the World Trade Organization, in the International Herald Tribune, according to the World Bank press review Tuesday.
But WTO members are not seeking this month to finalize the Doha Round, he writes. Rather, this July package would constitute a framework that would provide a sound foundation for completing the talks expeditiously. Our target date of July 30 is not an official deadline at all, merely an accurate assessment by governments of the political reality.
Should we strike a deal in the coming days, we can expect to achieve an historic breakthrough in locking in a commitment to eliminate all forms of agricultural subsidies, to reform trade in cotton, to reduce the costs of trade and to consolidate the gains we have made in negotiations to provide special and differential treatment to developing countries.
Moreover, agreement this month would greatly increase the chances of our striking a final deal that would undoubtedly lift living standards in developing countries.
In a related commentary published in Le Monde (France), François Loos, the French Minister of External Commerce, explains that the substance of an agreement in the WTO talks must be favored over the creation of deadlines.
Loos enunciates principles that he considers are shared by a majority of participants and are preliminary conditions for worthwhile negotiations: That an agreement can be reached only if the Doha round takes into consideration the development of those countries that have not profited from globalization.
Everything must be done in order for the poorest countries, and especially those of Africa, to derive real profits from the negotiations, Loos writes. The issue of the cotton trade, raised last year by African producers, must be addressed. More generally, developed countries must commit to managing their production to leave enough room for the poorest countries to place their exports.
Also, beyond the issue of development, the negotiations must meet every partys interests, he writes. Globalization will only be understood and accepted if citizens and national representatives consider that it is evolving in a balanced way.
On Europes stance in the negotiations, Loos says: – If we make concessions on a particular issue, it is legitimate that our economy should be compensated in another way. I am thinking in particular of the issue of export subsidies. The heart of the European economic and social model cannot be altered.
– The EU must make explicit its limits, beyond which further concessions would render the Doha talks pointless for it. It would be disastrous to seek to reach an agreement at all cost, at the detriment of the values and goals defended by the WTO.
Arguing along similar lines in an interview in Les Echos (France), Pascal Lamy, the European Trade Commissioner, says that before the EU accepts anything, the 25-nation bloc has to verify that it is reciprocated in renouncing agricultural export subsidies.
The trade must lead to a win-win situation, until which the EU will retain a defensive position concerning its most sensitive agricultural products, he says. No-one wishes to go through the situation experienced in Cancun once again and multilateralism must be maintained, as it is one of the most positive values in global trade, Lamy argues.
Also writing on the WTO trade talks, The Financial Times carries a piece by Sheila Page, Research Fellow at the Overseas Development Institute, who comments that although the talks are intended to advance the WTOs Doha development agenda, opposition from poor countries may prove even harder to overcome.
Many who would define themselves as friends of developing countries are exasperated. They believe that the Group of 90 – the bloc comprising the worlds least-developed countries and the smallest of the developing countries – do not understand what they are asking, and urge the main trading powers not to let them prevent an agreement.
But these countries have good reasons for their position, Page writes. Calculating gains and losses from multilateral proposals, with all their ramifications for existing agreements, is difficult. For countries with limited capacity to negotiate, little experience and more pressing development priorities than trade, maintaining their traditional position is an obvious solution.
The members of the G90 should be given time to develop their own negotiating skills and confidence in the system. A long round – the muted interest suggests that business in developed countries would tolerate this – may not satisfy the most ardent advocates of free trade but it could ultimately offer the biggest gains for everyone, she concludes.
Kilde: www.worldbank.org
