Brussels, 23/02/2011 (Agence Europe) - The world trade talks of the Doha Round are making progress but far too slowly to meet the target shared by the World Trade Organisation's 153 member countries of signing a big agreement later this year. Addressing the WTO's General Council on Tuesday 22 February, the WTO's leader, Pascal Lamy, urged the delegations to get over their differences on the most controversial issues still under negotiation.
Encouragement from the G20 leaders in Seoul last year and World Economic Forum leaders in Davos in January had revived hopes of a deal on the very long-drawn-out Doha Trade Round (talks began in 2001, but got bogged down in Geneva in 2008) being signed in 2011. The WTO's director general, Pascal Lamy, gave Easter as the deadline for drafting revised compromise deals and summer of this year for finalising the compromise deals. He is planning to convene a ministerial conference in Geneva in December to sign the full deal but given the situation at the end of February, progress is not keeping up with expectations.
Addressing the General Council on Tuesday, Lamy said the recent talks between high-ranking officials of the main WTO member countries had been encouraging, but there needed to be a major shift in speed at all levels - “multilateral, plurilateral and bilateral” - because the window of opportunity to conclude the talks in 2011 was still open but was closing day by day. The 20 or so delegations that took the floor on Tuesday did not disagree. The United States and developing countries alike welcomed the more constructive working environment but regretted the lack of breakthroughs on crucial issues.
Agriculture - including farm and export subsidies in rich countries, access to rich countries' farm products markets and the special safeguard mechanism for developing countries' farmers - is still the subject of debate, as are the chapters on the trade in services, rules and “sectoral” agreements for industry to ensure the voluntary phasing out of tariffs in 14 key industries, like car manufacturing, electronics, machinery, textiles and clothes. The negotiations are continuing over the opening up of markets for green products (see EUROPE 10311 for an update on the environmental talks) and subsidised fishing.
The negotiations are in the doldrums on each of these issues. Last week, New Zealand ambassador David Walker, the mediator in the farm talks, said he had heard nothing new and each day was wasted going over the same old ground. Several ambassadors called on Lamy to warn member countries and get them to make sure their trade ministers and WTO negotiators were more flexible. Everyone is aware that the presidential election campaign in the United States in 2012 will delay even further the reaching of a WTO deal if agreement cannot be reached this year.
The question of how a compromise would be worked out remains on the table. Several delegations, like Mexico, Chile, Colombia, South Korea, Turkey and Switzerland, said on Tuesday that the negotiations process that began among sherpas of the trading powers in the developed world (Australia, Canada, the United States, Japan and the EU) and the emerging economies (South Africa, Argentina, Brazil, China, India - and Mauritius to represent the ACP states) should be extended to other countries. (E.H./transl.fl)