Brussels/Geneva, 20/07/2001 (Agence Europe) - The negotiations over the accession by China to the World Trade Organisation has seen further progress, this week in Geneva, only leaving a problem of wording over insurance services. The competent working group closed, on Friday evening, five days of informal talks. It hopes to finalise the accession texts in September, in time for a ministerial "green light" from the 141 in Doha, two months later.
According to sources close to the institution, the representatives from the 141 made "continuous progress" since the determinant session that took place at the beginning of the month (see EUROPE of 6 July, p.10) except over services, added the same source, feeling that the disagreement between the Union, China and the United States over the definition of the legal status of branches of foreign insurance companies would no doubt be the only one to remain after this week of intense multilateral and bilateral talks. The American AIG group, first to have moved into the Chinese market in 1992 rebelled, in a press release, against the European objections towards the Sino-American arrangement over this point, which casts doubt over the lead this insurer has over its competitors. According to it, the question of knowing if AIG should be authorised to continue the expansion of the operations of its branches on the basis of global property in China has never been raised in the negotiations until the Union tried, in these negotiations with China, to limit such an expansion. In fact, a certain number of insurance companies based in Europe have themselves been criticised for aspects of their operations in China, but they argue that only AIG enjoys twinning provisions (which Washington wants to include in the report by the working group, against the opinion of the European and Chinese: Ed.).
On the other hand, representatives from the 141 were able to dissipate the developing countries' fear (expressed by Malaysia, India, South Korea…) that their approval of the 8.5% rate, agreed with the Americans, for the capping of Chinese agricultural subsidies, may be considered as a precedent in the framework of future negotiations to the detriment of this category of countries, which, in principal, enjoy a ceiling of 10%. The next meeting - which all expect to be the last - is set for mid-September (no doubt on the 10th). In the rush, the European Parliament will be called upon to rule on the package of accession texts. Its opinion is the only one that constitutes a prior condition for the green light from the WTO. We do not know in what time frame this will be done or under what conditions, but with this opinion from the EP, we hope to be ready for a ministerial decision in Qatar, indicated Geneva. The Chinese Parliament will only ratify the accession undertakings once these two stages have been completed and one-month later, the door of the trade "club" will open to Beijing.