Bridges Weekly Trade News Digest • Volume 10 • Number 11 • 29th March 2006
Lamy To TNC: Missing End-April Deadline Would Be ‘Huge Collective Mistake’
Letting an end-April deadline go by without establishing a framework Doha Round agreement on cutting subsidies and tariffs would be "a huge collective mistake," WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy told Members on 28 March. "The moment of truth is… fast approaching," he told the Trade Negotiations Committee (TNC), urging Members to step up the pace of negotiations. Making a rare call for ministerial involvement in the push towards ‘full modalities,’ he reminded delegates that 33 days remained until the 30 April target date set out in the Hong Kong Declaration, and only 279 until the end of the year, by which time Members have pledged to conclude the round.
Lamy identified a "triangle" of key issues that needed to be solved by the end of April — domestic farm subsidies, agricultural market access, and industrial tariffs — and said that the level of ambition Members achieve on the three would "serve as the benchmark" for the rest of the issues on the agenda. He has previously indicated that progress would require the US to agree to deeper cuts in domestic farm support, the EU to lower farm tariffs further, and developing countries such as Brazil and India to move on industrial tariffs.
The depth of cuts to all three ends of this "triangle," Lamy continued, should be substantially higher than those achieved during the Uruguay Round, even after flexibilities for Members to shield some subsidies and tariffs from reduction are taken into account. "Backloading the three key areas" beyond the April deadline, he warned, "is in my view a recipe for failure. These three areas hold the key to open the door to the many other issues which also need to fall into place to conclude this round…"
Despite Lamy’s emphasis on the end of April, Geneva-based trade diplomats have in recent weeks sounded increasingly pessimistic about their chances of meeting the deadline, as there has been little movement in the negotiations on agriculture and non-agricultural market access (NAMA; see related stories, this issue).
In his address to the TNC, Lamy strongly urged ministers to come to Geneva for protracted discussions, saying that their establishment would "require some sort of ministerial involvement during the last week of April, with a safety net [in the] beginning of May." The open call for ministerial participation and the heavy emphasis on the April deadline’s importance in spite of the persistent deadlock in the talks are unusual for the WTO chief, who in the past has taken great care not to build up expectations before meetings for fear that a high-profile collapse could turn into a potentially mortal blow for the round.
The negotiations may receive a boost from a 31 March - 1 April gathering in Rio de Janeiro, where US Trade Representative Rob Portman, EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson, and Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim will attempt to narrow their differences. Lamy has indicated that he would attend the meeting.
Lamy: negotiations have moved from generalities towards texts
In his overview of the state of the Doha Round talks, Lamy commended Members for starting to move towards text-based negotiations on agriculture and rules, citing, for example, a new paper on food aid from the African and least-developed country (LDC) groups, as well as recent proposals on fisheries subsidies. He said that "we must quickly develop a more complete picture of the issues that could be the basis of a final agreement" in areas including trade facilitation, environment, and intellectual property rights.
Lamy reported that the informal consultations on implementation issues had been "reinvigorated," with increased Member participation. Even on issues such as the relationship between the WTO Agreement on Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), he said, delegations’ differing positions have become more clear, and "there is a general willingness to continue to engage…" (see BRIDGES Weekly, 22 March 2006)
In his report to the TNC, agriculture Chair Ambassador Crawford Falconer (New Zealand) said that the negotiations were not beyond saving, but that it would require a vastly increased effort from Members in order to do so. NAMA Chair Ambassador Don Stephenson (Canada) said that there had been no progress whatsoever in the core aspects of the talks. Nevertheless, sources report that he implicitly suggested that an agreement on industrial tariff cuts would be within reach were it not for the divisions elsewhere — on agriculture and perhaps services to a lesser extent.
Process concerns raised
Echoing concerns raised recently by some Members, at least one delegation at the TNC meeting complained about the lack of inclusiveness of the processes that were driving the talks forward. In his remarks, Lamy had reiterated his commitment to transparency, saying that he accepted invitations to gatherings such as the 10-11 March London summit of trade ministers from the G-6 (the EU, the US, Australia, Brazil, India, Japan) only if he could report on them to the wider WTO Membership. Although he described such meetings as potentially useful to negotiators’ work in Geneva, he was emphatic that all delegations must play a role in decision-making, and that it would "not be enough for a small number of Members to suddenly arrive with a piece of paper in their hands on 30 April."
Some civil society groups fear that the end of April risks repeating the July 2004 Framework (WT/L/579) negotiations, during which ministers from several developing country governments were not present. Focus on the Global South’s Aileen Kwa expressed concern about the lack of specifics in Lamy’s call for ministerial involvement, suggesting that if only a handful of ministers showed up in April, small groups of Members such as the G-6 may end up making decisions for the organisation as a whole. She argued that either every minister should come to Geneva, or none at all. "Lamy should simply say so if he wants all ministers to come," she said.
ICTSD reporting; "WTO chief Lamy to join Brazil, EU, US for talks," AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE, 28 March 2006.