WTO Ministerial Section • Volume 5 • Number 29 • 31st July 2001
No Progress On Doha Agenda At WTO’s ‘Reality Check
At a much-awaited informal meeting of the WTO General Council (GC) on 30-31 July, Members remained far apart on agreement over elements of an agenda for the WTO’s Fourth Ministerial Conference from 9-13 November in Doha, Qatar. Intended as a ‘reality check’ 100 days before the Ministerial, Members failed to use the opportunity to advance on what could appear on a Ministerial Declaration, and instead forwarded statements that for the most part re-iterated previously-known positions (see, for instance, BRIDGES Weekly, 6 June 2001)
A report last week from GC Chair Stuart Harbinson said that major differences remained between WTO Members, and that “it is an urgent necessity to narrow these gaps.” Little had changed by Monday-Tuesday this week. According to one trade official, “a lot of delegations have chosen to do what the Chair asked them not to do.” Harbinson’s warning was reinforced by WTO Director-General Mike Moore, who told the GC on 30 July that without the momentum given to the WTO by a round of trade negotiations, many countries would focus on bilateral or regional agreements, a process that would almost certainly leave out the world’s poorest states. A second failure to launch a global trade round [after the last stalled Ministerial in Seattle in 1999], Moore said, “would certainly condemn us to a long period of irrelevance.”
Though European Commission Director-General for Trade, Mogens Peter Carl, expressed general optimism at the meeting that “the train is clearly moving,” he too admitted that differences remain between WTO Members on several issues and that all Members should now show flexibility. Carl singled out four key areas in which there was work to be done if a new round is to be launched: implementation, agriculture, anti-dumping and trade and environment. He also underlined the need for a substantive development agenda.
Speaking at the GC, Malaysia forwarded a ‘let’s get real’ statement which observers said put the situation in a realistic light. According to Malaysia, Members are so far away from agreement at this stage that unless there is significant movement soon, the WTO will be left with nothing but talks on the built-in agenda of agriculture and services, market access for non-agricultural products, and implementation - long a developing country concern to remedy imbalances in the WTO agreements.
Jamaican Ambassador Ransford Smith said that some Members are reluctant to start negotiations because there is no agreement on what the acceptable issues on the table will be. “If there’s no agreement on a package, we’re stymied in the trade-offs,” he said. For its part, India said a new round would only add to the “asymmetries and imbalances” that poorer Members suffered after the Uruguay Round.
Progress on implementation continues to be a formidable challenge for trade negotiators (see BRIDGES Weekly, 24 July). One informed trade source emphasised that “nothing will move on other issues at all unless there’s movement on implementation either before or at Doha.” A number of developing countries are saying that Members at Doha must give firm deadlines on implementation issues. One trade source said they expected that Doha might yield a modest immediate outcome but could provide clear guidelines — if not actual deadlines — for progress in some of the more contentious issue areas. On one of these, agriculture, Japan and the EU will be pushing for as vague language as possible in order to provide negotiating flexibility for their agriculture markets, the source said. Japan and the EU have been targeted by many other WTO Members — in particular the Cairns Group of agriculture-exporting countries — as shying away from substantial liberalisation of their agriculture regimes.
Moving into the WTO’s month-long recess over August, Director-General Moore told Members that by the beginning of September they should be ready for intensive bargaining that would result in a coherent draft Ministerial Declaration, enabling countries to go to Doha with a document around which there is substantial agreement.
But Harbinson’s report, which will be sent to capitals over the interim, provides a reminder of how far apart Members continue to be. “It is not simply the extent of the outstanding differences…that is worrying but the apparently entrenched nature of those differences,” the Chair’s paper states.
“WTO Chief tells members to ‘get real’ on trade,” FINANCIAL TIMES, 31 July 2001; “Prospects for new trade round “fragile” - WTO chief,” REUTERS, 30 July 2001; “WTO Members stall on conditions for trade talks,” WSJ EUROPE, 30 July 2001; ICTSD Internal Files.