Bridges Weekly Trade News Digest • Volume 10 • Number 14 • 26th April 2006
WTO Members To Miss April Deadline For Modalities
The WTO’s beleaguered Doha Round negotiations suffered another blow this week, when trade diplomats had to acknowledge that they would fail to meet a key end-April deadline for a framework deal on cutting agricultural tariffs, farm subsidies, and duties on industrial goods.
Participants at an informal heads of delegation meeting on 24 April broadly agreed with Director-General Pascal Lamy’s assessment that it would be pointless to summon ministers to Geneva for a high-level meeting at the end of the month, since divisions in the agriculture and non-agricultural market access (NAMA) talks remained so wide that there was no realistic chance of striking an agreement on modalities. Ambassadors from some 25-30 Member countries had recognized this earlier at a ‘green room’ gathering on the evening of 21 April. Instead of a ministerial-level meeting, a regular Trade Negotiations Committee has been scheduled for 1 May.
"It is not good news, but we have to face reality," said the WTO chief, who had said a month ago that missing the April deadline would be a "huge collective mistake" (see BRIDGES Weekly, 29 March 2006). He asked Members to engage in non-stop negotiations on agriculture and NAMA in the weeks to come. Although he did not specify any new dates for the circulation of negotiating texts, Lamy warned that waiting until the end of July for modalities in the two areas "would guarantee failure."
The 30 April target date for full modalities that WTO Member governments agreed to at the Hong Kong Ministerial Conference in December 2005 is thus set to become yet another in the Doha Round’s long list of missed deadlines. To put this into perspective, the Doha Declaration that launched the round in November 2001 had originally called for agriculture modalities to be agreed by 31 March 2003!
Nevertheless, many see the decision to cancel a ministerial-level summit as a wise one. A spokesman for EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson went so far as to suggest that it may turn out to be a blessing in disguise, reported UK daily The Guardian. Some fear that a high-profile failure could even have killed off the round altogether.
On the other hand, outgoing US Trade Representative Rob Portman told reporters on 26 April that the decision to cancel the meeting was "a mistake." He said that he would go to Geneva towards the end of the month along with his successor, current Deputy USTR Susan Schwab, to meet with trade officials there to "try to figure out ways to break the deadlock" (see related story, this issue).
Lamy: texts needed as soon as possible
Lamy believes ministers cannot make the big political decisions about the extent of subsidy and tariff cuts until they have more clarity about a number of other issues, particularly the nature of various exemptions that Members will use to shield products from reduction commitments.
"In order to make productive use of the direct involvement of ministers in the negotiations, we need to put well-developed texts before them for decision, and these texts are not yet there," he told the heads of delegation meeting.
Getting to text-based negotiations as quickly as possible should be Members’ "immediate objective," he said, asking the chairs of the agriculture and NAMA groups to hold continuous talks. "Negotiators should be on call on a permanent basis."
Lamy exhorted Members to "think in weeks rather than months, and a small number of weeks." Several delegates are hoping for modalities in June. One source said that since Members are well aware of the broader time constraints they are facing, the absence of a specific deadline may actually be helpful, because failing to meet a specific target date is both embarrassing and demoralizing.
"The game is here in Geneva"
Over the past few months, a number of smaller developing countries have expressed concerns about a series of high-level meetings among a handful of influential WTO Members — meetings to which they were not invited. Over 125 civil society groups including ActionAid, Oxfam, and Third World Network echoed these concerns in an 18 April letter to Lamy, in which they argued that smaller developing countries were being left out of what appeared to have become the Doha Round’s main negotiating forum. They called on the Director-General to do more to ensure the participation of all Member delegations.
Perhaps in response to these process-related concerns, Lamy took pains to stress "there should be no doubt that the game is here in Geneva, in the multilateral arena, not anywhere else." Although Lamy has admitted that ‘green room’ meetings among 25-30 delegates are useful to push the debate forward, he reiterated his commitment to maintain transparency and inclusiveness in the negotiating process, in part by holding more meetings with all delegations.
Blame game continues
In what has become a hallmark of the negotiations, Members have stepped up their attempts to blame each other for the lack of progress, even as Lamy said that this was "not a time for blame or recrimination."
When Mandelson tried to argue that responsibility for the failure lay with the US for not moderating its demands on farm tariffs, a US Trade Representative spokesperson responded that the EU was putting more effort into finger-pointing than into the negotiations.
According to one Geneva-based negotiator, the mudslinging was premature, as advances were taking place on the technical level. "It’s sad if we start the blame game." The delegate said that Members needed to get down to work, and that the next few weeks would be critical to the outcome of the talks.
Lamy had a similar view of the negotiations, arguing that there had been genuine progress — just not as much as was needed. "We may have missed the deadline but we are not in deadlock," he said.
ICTSD reporting; "Delegates try to kickstart Doha round," THE GUARDIAN, 24 April 2006; "US rejects blame for WTO impasse," REUTERS, 21 April 2006; "Trade talks to miss key deadline," INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE, 25 April 2006.