Doha ‘Stocktaking’ Outcome: More of the Same

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The WTO’s week-long “stocktaking” of the Doha Round trade talks ended on Friday with a whimper, not a bang. The much-touted goal of concluding the negotiations toward a global trade deal before the end of 2010 - an objective laid out by heads of state last year - was quietly set aside, as officials acknowledged that political hurdles continue to block progress in the round, much as they have for the past 18 months.

“There is no denying the fact that we are not where we wanted to be by now,” WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy told officials assembled for a formal meeting of the WTO’s Trade Negotiations Committee (TNC) on Friday morning. But he assured delegates that efforts to wrap up the eight-year-old talks will continue unabated.

“Nobody is contemplating dropping the ball,” he told the meeting. “Everyone is still very much committed to the mandate of the round and to its successful conclusion. That is the spirit which I have seen this week, and that is the most important message that you are sending to the world.”

Lamy told delegates that the talks will now focus on “closing the gaps” in the negotiations, and that he will encourage officials to bargain “horizontally” across various areas of the talks. Such work will occur under the guidance of the chairs of the various WTO negotiating groups as well as in less formal meetings of WTO members “in variable geometry,” Lamy said. Throughout this process, Lamy assured the delegates, he will adhere strictly to the principles of transparency and inclusiveness to “ensure that all voices are heard.”

And so the Doha negotiations will continue - with little change, it seems, from the past several months. Some delegates appeared frustrated with the outcome of the stocktaking, even as they declared their commitment to forging ahead in the talks.

Addressing the TNC after Lamy’s opening remarks, a delegate from one major emerging economy referenced Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. The United States has been unwilling to make concessions, the official claimed, and the interests of developing countries have been undermined as a result.

Several delegates who spoke up at the Friday meeting stressed that members should seek to avoid any “backtracking” from the most recent drafts of the chairs’ negotiating texts. A handful of others emphasised that it will be impossible to close the technical gaps in the talks without a substantial influx of political momentum. None of the 36 delegations that intervened proposed that the talks should be put on hold, but neither did any of them suggest establishing a new deadline for the bringing the round to a successful conclusion.

“Of course, cynics will say this is a diplomatic fig leaf not to recognise failure,” Lamy told delegates. “I disagree.”

The negotiations from here on will focus on technical work, Lamy said, adding that advances on this front will help delegations develop a more thorough understanding of the size and shape of the remaining gaps.

“As long as possible trade-offs are not defined by clear differences, there remains understandable hesitations for negotiators to engage in possible options for compromises,” he said.

The Director-General pointed out that trade ministers will have opportunities for informal powwows on the sidelines of upcoming meetings of the Cairns Group of agriculture-exporting countries, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) group. Such high-level contacts could help resolve issues for which differences of position are already well defined, Lamy said.

In response to a reporter’s question about the goal of striking a new global trade deal before the end of the year, Lamy noted that it was still technically feasible but that it was up to members to get the job done. Effectively, however, the end-of-year goal has already eluded the WTO’s grasp. The organisation’s poorest members would need roughly nine months to prepare to implement a new global trade deal, and the first quarter of 2010 has already passed by with no major breakthroughs in the talks.

As the negotiations stumble along with no end in sight, some observers - and even some delegates, when speaking privately - have said that it might be time to begin thinking about putting the Doha talks on hold for awhile, or even abandoning them altogether. But last week’s stocktaking made one thing clear: the climate of the talks has not soured so much as to make such suggestions politically palatable at the WTO.

Lori Wallach, the director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch - a Washington-based group that has at times been a loud critic of the WTO - claimed in a statement on Friday that it is time for the global trade body to update its agenda. But Wallach, for one, is not holding her breath.

“No country wants to be blamed for pulling the plug on these WTO talks, even as many seek a new approach,” she said.

ICTSD reporting.