WTO Ministerial Section • Volume 9 • Number 35 • 19th October 2005

TNC: Lamy Outlines Doha Round Roadmap For Hong Kong And Beyond

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Outlining the steps necessary to bring the Doha Round to conclusion by the end of 2006, WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy cautioned Members on 13 October that even an agreement at the Hong Kong Ministerial Conference in December would leave them with a great deal of work to do.

Speaking to the WTO Trade Negotiations Committee (TNC), which he chairs, Lamy hailed the US proposal on domestic farm subsidies for switching "the engines of the negotiation plane" back on. However, though he welcomed all of the new proposals on agricultural market access, he warned that Members were so far apart on the issue that they could not even be said to be truly negotiating on it (see BRIDGES Weekly, 12 October 2005, Story 1 and Story 2).

The WTO chief’s "roadmap for Hong Kong" would have Members start to come up with "approximations" for what they want to achieve at the Ministerial Conference by mid-October. It sets out a mid-November target for producing a "comprehensive draft" version of an eventual Hong Kong declaration. This would require the chairs of the Doha Round negotiating groups to put forward texts by that time.

Looking ahead: much do to even after Hong Kong

Lamy has said elsewhere that the Hong Kong summit must take Members "two-thirds" of the way to completing the round. However, he told the TNC that even if general formulae are agreed upon this December, a great deal of technical work would be necessary for Members to translate those promises into specific, binding liberalisation commitments.

He outlined how this work would unfold for the agriculture negotiations. Countries would likely take a month to agree on a common format for listing their commitments, and then a further three to produce draft commitment schedules. Two to three more months would be required for Members to verify these draft schedules, followed by three months to convert them into final legal texts.

The equivalent process for the non-agricultural market access (NAMA) talks may take even longer than this ten-month "best case scenario" for agriculture. Members would also have to simultaneously do the same for new commitments on rules and services — on top of finishing up negotiations on issues left over from Hong Kong. Lamy pointed out that this would be particularly taxing for developing countries with limited negotiating capacity.

The urgency to finish this technical work by the end of 2006 springs largely from the need to give a Doha Round package time to receive US Congressional approval before 1 July 2007, when President George W. Bush’s ‘trade promotion authority’ is set to expire. After that date, the Bush administration will no longer be able to submit a Doha Round deal to Congress for a yes-or-no vote without the possibility of amendment. Rising protectionism in Congress means that these rules for expediting the passage of trade agreements are unlikely to be renewed.

Members express differences on ag, NAMA

Agriculture Chair Ambassador Crawford Falconer of New Zealand expressed hope that upcoming meetings on the farm trade talks would lead to progress on market access (see related story, this issue). The US took the floor during the TNC meeting to emphasise that its proposal on domestic support was conditional on reduced farm tariffs in other developed and developing countries, as well as substantial trade liberalisation in services and industrial goods. This could potentially conflict with the view expressed by the G-20, on whose behalf Brazil said that they could not slash farm tariffs by more than the 36 percent average level outlined for developing countries in their proposal. The EU said that it had already significantly deepening its market access offer by giving up its demands for certain flexibilities in the application of the tariff reduction formula — however, even this offer has already been dismissed as insufficient by US trade negotiators. Japanese Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Mineichi Iwanaga made clear that his government would not accept disciplines that would destroy its heavily-protected agriculture sector.

Non-agricultural market access (NAMA) Chair Ambassador Stefan Johannesson of Iceland warned Members against assuming that there will automatically be progress on industrial goods if there is forward momentum in the agriculture talks. India, Brazil, and Argentina contested Lamy’s assessment that the NAMA talks were moving towards consensus on a ‘Swiss’ tariff-reduction formula associated with a "limited number of coefficients," observing that if there were indeed such a consensus, they were not part of it.

Lamy briefly touched upon other areas of the talks, urging the chairs of the different negotiating groups to "refine their agenda and focus on the main items for Hong Kong." On services, he said that Members must define their level of ambition in Hong Kong, specifying that it "must match the rest of the negotiations," and work out how it can then be achieved.

Transparency and inclusiveness emphasised

Although he acknowledged that high-level meetings among small numbers of influential WTO Members are "essential as a catalyst to the progress we urgently need," Lamy stressed that they were "no substitute for the deliberations of the full membership." He said that such meetings should aim only to "bring back fresh ideas and opportunities to the Membership as a whole in full transparency and inclusiveness," and promised to continue his efforts to promote transparency among all Members.

The General Council is meeting on 19-20 October. Trade ministers from the US, the EU, Brazil, India and Australia will be in Geneva at the same time, in an attempt to find common ground in the agriculture negotiations.

ICTSD reporting.