Brussels, 01/08/2014 (Agence Europe) - The 160 countries that are members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) failed on Thursday 31 July to adopt the implementation protocol for the trade facilitation agreement reached at the ministerial summit in Bali in December 2013. Ambassadors had until midnight on 31 July to reach agreement, but India refused to lift its veto.
“The EU deeply regrets that the WTO was not able to adopt the Trade Facilitation Protocol within the agreed deadline of 31 July, despite the overwhelming support of almost all members of the WTO. The failure to adopt the Trade Facilitation Protocol goes against the decisions supported by all WTO members in Bali in December last year”, stated a European Commission spokesman. He added: “The EU applauds the enormous efforts by WTO Director General Azevedo to find a solution among members. Members were close to reaching an agreement. The EU would have been ready to support any solution that would respect the substance of the agreements reached in Bali, in particular on food security”. The Commission concluded: “WTO members now need to reflect on the implications of this failure to adopt the Trade Facilitation Protocol. The EU will engage fully in these reflections with other WTO members”.
On 25 July, India blocked the adoption of this protocol - for which the deadline of 31 July was set under the terms of the Bali mini-agreement - and it asked for the protocol to be postponed due to a lack of progress in the discussions on a permanent solution to agricultural subsidies and food stocks. New Delhi has linked the trade facilitation agreement and the guarantees India seeks on another hard-fought compromise at Bali - the “peace clause” (which is valid for four years and enables developing countries, first and foremost India, to take measures on public stockholdings for food security purposes beyond the limits set by the WTO for domestic support, without these measures being contested at the WTO). India wants the deadline to be postponed until the end of 2014 in order to negotiate a permanent solution for the peace clause. In Bali, the previous Indian government only obtained a moratorium until 2017.
At the WTO, decisions have to be reached by agreement so a single country can veto them.
During the day of Thursday 31 July, the head of the WTO, Roberto Azevedo, of Brazil, met in vain with the coordinators of the WTO regional groups to try to find a solution. At the end of the day, he met for a few minutes with the representatives of the 160 WTO member countries behind closed doors and announced that it had not been possible to reach agreement. In a press release, he explained that a solution could not be found to allow an approximation of views despite everything possible being tried. Azevedo urged the WTO members to think long and hard about the implications of this failure. A view shared by the US ambassador to the WTO, Michael Punke. He said they were sad and disappointed to see that a small handful of countries were not prepared to stand by the commitments they made at the conference in Bali in December. He said he agreed with the director general that the action places the WTO on highly uncertain ground.
Hopes of a solution had been raised by the visit to India on Thursday by US Secretary of State John Kerry, heading a large delegation. Kerry chaired the fifth annual strategic dialogue between the United States and India, but the New Delhi government made it clear that it was not intending to change its position.
The trade facilitation agreement was the main concrete outcome from the ministerial conference in Bali.
Azevedo did not hide his concerns for the continuation of the negotiation process at the WTO. A work programme is due to be approved by December on agriculture, access to the market for industrial products and development under the Doha Trade Round, a vast programme of liberalising world trade that began in 2001 in the Qatar capital, but has not yet been implemented.
On 7 December 2013, after tough and tricky negotiations, the WTO reached a “historic” agreement in Bali, the first agreement to be signed since the WTO was set up in 1995, which saved it from obsolescence, but at the price of watering down its level of ambition. The Bali agreement represented less than 10% of the huge reform programme launched in Doha. (LC)