Brussels, 22/11/2001 (Agence Europe) - For the group of 77 ACP countries (Africa/Caribbean/Pacific) linked to the European Union by the Cotonou Agreement, the fourth ministerial conference of the World Trade Organisation is crowned as a global success. Asserted Jean-Robert Goulangana, Secretary General of the ACP group, on Wednesday in Brussels, during a press conference dedicated to the development of the agreement concluded in Doha. According to him, the main aims that the ACP Trade Ministers set themselves for this final deadline (see EUROPE of 8 November, p.9) have all been met, as the ACP group: appeared as a coherent force, united and welded, and as a major player; obtained a derogation to the WTO rules until 2007, derogation, which it called for over the last 20 months in Geneva, for the implementation of the trade aspects of the Cotonou agreement and which had caused opposition from the Latin American countries; - succeeded in better putting across the point of view of the ACP, which where heard by all of the participants and consulted on everything.
In the opinion of Jean-Robert Goulangana, this success is explained by the unprecedented degree of organisation that the ACP countries demonstrated to prepare for these negotiations and to adapt, on the ground, to the pace of the works, in a manner to ensure their not being excluded from any decision. Before Doha, we had established the necessary co-ordination structures, with a single spokesperson for the group and six co-ordinators (one per sub-region). In Doha, this group decided to write, on the one hand, to the President of the WTO to ensure the distribution of the statement by the ACP Trade Ministers as the official working document to all the participants and, on the other hand, to the Conference President to include on the agenda the examination of the demand for a derogation. We then nominated a spokesperson for each of the thorny issues tackled by the friends of the Presidency: the TRIPS (patents and intellectual property), agriculture, the WTO rules, implementation, the issue of Singapore (that is to say all the new issues that will have to be the object of an assessment before the beginning of the new negotiations). This enabled us to maintain a permanent co-ordination between the ACP, he explained. Jean-Robert Goulangana also welcomed the fact that the ACP group, the OAU (which includes the countries north of the Sahara that are not members of the ACP) and the group of LDC (of which 9 out of the 49 are not members of the ACP) have decided to unite their forces, thus becoming the largest group in number within the negotiations. The formation of this block enabled us to be associated with all the formal and informal meetings, he stated.
Convinced that the tactic of alliance paid off, Jean-Robert Goulangana considered that points that he set out very useful, before the conference, with the ambassadors from numerous countries (Japan, India, the United States, Singapore, Australia, Canada, Egypt, Tunisia, Chile, Brazil and Uruguay) who for the most part have trade agreements with the Union, as well as the ACP ministerial mission sent to India before Doha, the co-ordination between the ACP Ambassadors accredited to Geneva and Brussels, and the daily co-ordination meetings with the European Union in Doha.
Obtaining the derogation, which required a consensus, is to be credited on a compromise over bananas between the Union, the United States and Ecuador, he underlined. The ACP called for a derogation until the end of 2007 for all the trade covered by the Cotonou Agreement (the entry into force of the future regional economic partnership agreement being planned for 2008) and a special derogation for the same timeframe guaranteeing the preferential access of ACP bananas to the European market, in the knowledge that beginning 2006 the present preferential regime will be replaced by a solely tariff based protection. The Latin American countries, for their part, subordinated their agreement to the guarantee that the European Union would not take advantage and increase tariffs and thus limit access of the Latin American banana to the European market. The compromise reached is based on the written undertaking of the Union not to caste doubt over this access and over the assurance that the ACP derogation would fall once the two possibilities for arbitration offered to the plaintiff party are exhausted. The request by Ecuador to freeze the access of the ACP countries to the A and B quotas from the licensed import system was considered unacceptable both by the ACP countries and the European Commission, noted Jean-Robert Goulangana, obviously satisfied.
Among the other reasons for being pleased, the Secretary General welcomed the agreement that arose over the access of developing countries to medicines (see EUROPE of 14 November and 15 November, p.7), space has now been given to issues of development in the WTO agenda, the reassertion of the special and differentiated treatment for the less developed countries, the decision concerning the technical assistance programme for implementation in favour of the developing countries, the recognition that working standards continue to stem from the International Labour Organisation (ILO), as desired by the ACP.
Concerning the decision to launch a new round of negotiations, Jean-Robert Goulangana consider himself pleased, as the text of the declaration by the Doha conference does not set a date. Recognising that all those who criticised the functioning of the WTO contributed towards the taking into account of the interests of the developing countries, the Secretary General concluded in favour of the need to capitalise on the result in Doha for the future.