Bridges Weekly Trade News Digest • Volume 6 • Number 31 • 18th September 2002

WTO Members To Submit Comprehensive Market Access Modalities Proposals By November


Continuing discussions held in August at the last meeting of the Negotiating Group on Market Access (see BRIDGES Weekly, 8 August 2002), Members met on 12-13 September to resume discussions on negotiating modalities on tariffs and non-tariff barriers on non-agricultural products. Positions raised by Members on 12 September closely resembled those that had emerged in August.

Background

Previously, on 19 July, Members agreed to submit proposals on modalities — or formulas for how to negotiate — for market access talks by 1 November this year, with a consolidated overview scheduled for the Group’s first meeting in 2003. At that time Members also agreed to reach a common understanding on a possible outline of modalities by the end of March 2003, with a view to reaching an agreement on those modalities by 31 May 2003.

12-13 meeting

Most delegates who made interventions at the 12-13 September session notified the Negotiating Group that they were working on comprehensive proposals to be submitted by the November meeting, currently scheduled for the 4th and 5th of that month. As such, few new positions were aired.

For its part, Kenya reinforced previous comments from other developing countries by warning Members that there were limits on its ability to make significant market access commitments. China reiterated its view that it had already made market access concessions in it accession process, and was not prepared to engage in further cuts in tariff and non-tariff barriers in the context of the Doha negotiations. The EC said that despite some Members’ desire to exclude certain products from the negotiations, in its view the talks should address all non- agricultural products without exclusion.

Environmental goods

In its intervention on environmental goods, India said it would not accept any definition of environmental goods that included goods ‘produced in a sound environmental manner’. India’s view mirrored the ‘end-use’ approach advocated by the US in a 3 July submission (see BRIDGES Weekly, 17 July 2002). However, the EC reportedly said that the definition of what constituted an environmental good was already included in the Doha Declaration as ‘a good that contributes to sustainable development’.

On the second day of the meeting, Members considered four new documents prepared by the WTO Secretariat to support the market access talks. These included an Annotated Selective Bibliography of Research on Market Access (TN/MA/S/1/Add.1, searchable at http://docsonline.wto.org); Data Availability and Software Tools for Tariff Negotiations (TN/MA/S/2); Modalities of Tariff Negotiations (TN/MA/S/3); and WTO Members’ Tariff Profiles (TN/MA/S/4).

ICTSD reporting.