Brussels, 25/07/2014 (Agence Europe) - As we were going to press on Friday 25 July, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) General Council was trying to formally adopt the implementation protocol of the trade facilitation agreement reached at the ministerial conference in Bali in December 2013.
India, however, was threatening to veto adoption of the protocol, which runs out on 31 July according to the Bali mini-agreement, because of lack of progress in talks on a permanent solution to the problem of farm subsidies and food stockholdings. New Delhi is connecting signing the trade facilitation agreement with the guarantees it is demanding on another hard-won Bali agreement, known as the “peace clause”, which will allow developing countries, and certainly India, to take measures that will, for four years, allow public stockholdings for food security purposes of agricultural produce beyond the limits set by the WTO, without their being challenged at the WTO. India wants the deadline to be extended until 31 December 2014 in order to negotiate a permanent solution for the peace clause. In Bali, the previous Indian government only achieved a moratorium until 2017.
On Friday, developed countries opposed any extension of the deadline for adoption of the trade facilitation agreement. A group headed by Australia and including EU member states refused to re-open the discussions on one of the decisions without altering anything else that was agreed in Bali. The EU representative at the WTO General Council said: “We must respect the decisions taken by the ministers in Bali. The EU is not ready to negotiate basic elements on timelines that were agreed as an integral part of the Bali package”. Talks are expected to continue late into the evening on Friday. (EH)