Brussels, 08/09/2003 (Agence Europe) - A few days ahead of the 5th WTO ministerial conference, an international employer coalition combining Unice Europe and its partners in Africa, Australia, Brazil, Chile, Japan, Mexico and the Mediterranean region, this Thursday published a "Joint Business Charter for Cancun".
"European business leaders will spare no effort to facilitate progress in all fields of negotiations, because we remain deeply committed to the multilateral process and to achieving ambitious results", said Unice Secretary General Philippe de Buck, commenting on the joint text which "shows that business people throughout the world believe in the benefits of a multilateral systems", and lists their expectations.
"We, business organisations representing companies from developing and developed countries, are untied in wanting to make the 5th WTO ministerial Conference a success", say the signatories, convinced that "trade and investment liberalisation are essential for global economic growth, job creation, and consumer choice in developing and developed countries". Of this conference, which takes place half-way through the programmed negotiations on the Doha Development Agenda (DDA), they expect: - a signal of "confidence to investors, negotiators and consumers during this period of great economic uncertainty", - political impetus for the multilateral trade system based on international rules and co-operation, - the way to be cleared for the final phase of negotiations on DDA, which, they feel, remains "the winning formula" for the world economy and consumers. The employers "call upon WTO members to step up their efforts to overcome their differences and divisions, constructively and in the spirit of co-operation", in order to find common ground on: i) conditions for progress to be made in agricultural negotiations; ii) modalities for negotiations on non-agricultural markets, combining tariff and non-tariff measures; iii) the basis for the launch of negotiations on the Singapore subjects (facilitation of exchanges, investment, transparency of public procurement and competition); iv) clear guidelines and significant progress on special and differentiated treatment; v) the renewal of the commitment to pursue the liberalisation of services across the four means of supply. They also call upon the 147 to "allocate all the priority and necessary resources to the ongoing DDA negotiations so that they can be successfully concluded by the agreed 1 January 2005 deadline" because "while regionalism/bilateralism can be a useful means for liberalisation, multilateral liberalisation is our end goal".