Brussels / Geneva, 30/03/2001 (Agence Europe) - Negotiations within the World Trade Organisation (WTO) on agriculture entered their second phase this week. The duration of this phase has not been fixed and it will no doubt be tougher going than the first phase, which was closed on Tuesday (see EUROPE of 28 March). The 140 participants are expected, according to the terms used by Director General Mike Moore, "to take the political decisions necessary to narrow the gap between their positions". The very fact that 125 of them have presented negotiation proposals during the past year is, in his eyes, already a tremendous vote of confidence in favour of the multilateral system.
During the stock-taking session held on Monday and Tuesday, the negotiators assessed the situation of the positioning phase and established the work programme for the next twelve months. In all, 44 proposals for negotiation and three technical papers were presented until two days before the session by two thirds of the WTO member countries. These texts cover the different questions relating to the trade in farm products, which seem to be a priority or fundamental to the countries raising such questions.
The phase now over "has helped us better understand the broad range of interests at stake, and to realise the complexity of many issues that should be dealt with in greater detail during the next phase in negotiations", declared the Chair of the Agriculture Committee. "The coming phase will be the beginning of a more difficult process", he continued. It began this week and should continue with extraordinary, formal and informal sessions of the Agriculture Committee, scheduled for May, July, September and December 2001, then February and March 2002. The vagueness of the press release on the duration of this process denotes the lack of consensus on what should be done to facilitate and successfully conclude the negotiation. Some members, notably the European Union, Japan and Korea, insist that it be integrated into the future trade round while keeping Article 20 of the Uruguay Round on Agriculture as the strict basis. Nonetheless, the countries of the Cairns Group, some of which may accept this link provided that talks go beyond what was agreed in Marrakech, are putting up resistance. Also, the developing countries are more reticent to engage in a new round of talks, India and Pakistan in particular.
This being the case, negotiators agreed on the nature, the scope, the organisation and the basis of their work over coming months (strictly Article 20). All reform options and questions put forward will be examined in detail, beginning with the administration of tariff quotas, tariffs, the "yellow box" for aid having the heaviest impact on trade, rural development, and several more sensitive issues such as subsidies, credits and State enterprises that operate in exports, export refunds, health safety of food products, etc. According to a diplomat closely involved in the talks, all the themes potentially represent a thorny issue because no one has yet given anything up. Non-trade concerns, dear to Europeans, are among the difficulties in sight, as can be seen from the length of debates and from dissension over this issue and, more specifically, from the way it is tackled. In addition to the precautionary principle, that they recommend should be clarified in its terms and conditions, the EU's demand for guaranteed protection of quality food (protected denominations) causes a great deal of resistance on the part of the Cairns group, stressed the same diplomatic source in Geneva. He said the situation would no doubt be clearer in two or three months' time. The same is true for the problem of animal welfare raised by the Union, which is practically isolated on this issue in Geneva, except for the support received from Switzerland and Norway. Another particularly difficult problem relates to the different categories of support, the fate of the "blue box" for aid linked to production reduction programmes, and what can be put in the "green box", dispensing from all ceilings the aid which does not give rise to any distortion. The same is true for the commitments of the industrialised countries: Should they go well beyond those of developing countries? No, reply nearly all the developed countries at this stage, including the United States, Australia, Canada, Japan and the European Union. The latter tables on "flexibility" in favour of the most vulnerable countries rather than on the North/South distinction that could be to the advantage of the countries that are particularly successful as exporters such as Argentina, expressly named.
In other terms, although the climate towards the positions defended by the Union seems to have warmed up in Geneva during the past year - the effort of clarification on non-trade concerns, among other things, was determining - substantive difficulties remain the same and criticism remains severe, mainly against export subsidies and internal support.