Nairobi, 18/12/2015 (Agence Europe) - Meeting in Nairobi for the 10th ministerial conference of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the 162 member countries of this multilateral organisation were continuing their negotiations as EUROPE was going to press on Friday 18 December, to try to reach a partial agreement on agriculture and to find common ground on the multilateral work post-Nairobi - in other words, to decide on the future of the laborious Doha round, which was launched in 2001.
“We are very, very close (to an agreement). We hope we will be able to get there in the next few hours so that the time that was allocated to the conference, we stick to that. We're all very optimistic”, the president of the conference, the Kenyan Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Amina Mohamed, told the press late that afternoon, although the conference was due to have concluded on Friday lunchtime.
“The good news is that we've been working on a text, the draft declaration. Most of it has been clearing up. We've got very, very good momentum now. We've cleaned up most of the draft declaration that will include a work programme for the future. This is a very substantive result. There is absolutely no crisis”, she continued.
On Friday afternoon, following a tense night of talks, several convergent sources criticised the intransigent attitude of India on the three questions of the agricultural plank raised by the various groups of member countries in Nairobi: the export competition pillar, the special safeguard mechanism (SSM) and the public stockholding for food security purposes (see EUROPE 11456).
According to a number of sources, differences between the developed and the developing countries and, in particular, in the latter category, between the emerging and the developing countries, remained the most controversial subject of these discussions, with India seeking to get as much as it could out of an agricultural agreement and subscribe to requirements more in line with its weight in the global economy.
On top of marked differences of opinion between India and the developed countries, led by the United States and the EU, on the export competition pillar, one source told us that there is a deep division between India and Brazil which, as the head of line of the Latin American agricultural exporter countries, is opposed to the SSM. This mechanism allows the developing countries temporarily to increase their customs duty in the event of any sudden increases of agricultural imports.
“There is not a developed-developing countries dispute or between developing countries”, Mohamed however stressed, dismissing the idea that India is not as committed to the negotiations as other countries. “There are a few issues now, mainly in export competition”, she acknowledged, describing the negotiations as “delicate”.
“On agriculture, which is the central issue here, I do believe that a decent agreement is now within reach, on different types of export support of agricultural products. That would mark the success of the WTO - 50 years after we got rid of export support on industrial goods, it is high time that we do the same for agriculture. It would help the WTO to turn the page, and help to launch new ways of working for the future”, the European Commissioner for Trade, Cecilia Malmstrom, commented on her blog, earlier that day.
With 162 delegations also having to agree on the third part of the Nairobi statement, on the future of the Doha round and multilateral post-Nairobi work programme, Malmstrom went on to stress the need, in view of the rapid evolution of the world since the launch of the Doha round in 2001, for the WTO to “be able to raise new topics, such as e-commerce, investments and regulatory issues affecting goods and services behind borders (Ed: non-tariff barriers)”, she said.
“If we do not manage to agree here and now, things will indeed look gloomy for the multilateral trading system. That would be a true shame, since we so badly need a global rulebook that applies to all actors, rather than just a few”, Malmstrom warned. “Simply having a spaghetti bowl of bilateral trade deals is a far worse option”, she added, calling for the conclusion of more multilateral trade agreements in the future. Like the WTO agreement on the ITA, these agreements which are open to countries wishing to participate in them should be put under the aegis of the WTO, should remain open to member countries wishing to join them at a later date and should come with access to the dispute settlement mechanism of the WTO, Malmstrom said. (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)