Brussels, 26/09/2003 (Agence Europe) - Two weeks later than planned, the General Affairs Council will on Monday hear the European Commission's assessment of the failure of the 5th Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Cancun on 14 September. In the light of this analysis, presented by their negotiator in chief, and of questions raised by the somewhat chaotic meeting and its astonishingly abrupt end, the twenty-five held an initial exchange of views "off the cuff" on the consequences to be drawn from the event, in terms of Community priorities and the reform of an organisation which is still young and fragile, whose way of working has shown itself once more to be "medieval", to use Commissioner Lamy's expression. It will then be up to the 133 Committee- the Council body specialised in trade affairs- to carry on this reflection, on the basis of a working document to be submitted by the Commission on or shortly after 3 October.
Sometimes hailed as a victory for NGOs or certain developing countries, such as India, but more often slammed as a failure and a disappointment, or, in Brussels, seen as a "political shock"; the destiny of the recent WTO summit left more than one participant or observer nonplussed. For many, it raises one initial question: why did the President of the Conference, the Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez Bautista, put an end to the ministerial talks at around 4pm on 14 September, without trying to come back one last time to subjects other than the Singapore ones, to which he had devoted the whole of the previous day, without taking the time to summarise progress made (including on the problematic agricultural dossier) and subsisting obstructions, or consulting other officials, such as the Director General of the WTO, the "facilitators" or the President of the institution's General Council. Those taking part themselves seemed shocked that, contrary to the custom of extending talks in this kind of negotiations or political tangle with so many technicalities, with 146 voices that were discordant more than they were in harmony, Mr Derbez did not allow the "chief cooks" an extra night or day to sit down and lay their cards on the table, whilst several were already clearly beginning to do so even though others were sticking to a frosty "open your markets but hands off mine". "Most bizarre" or even "nonsensical" was the head of Mexican diplomacy's decision to place the so-called Singapore subjects (investment, competition, transparency of public procurement and facilitation of trade), of interest to only a few of the 146, at the top of the priority list of subjects for debate, was the word in Community circles. A few weeks later, several theories were emerging from Brussels to Geneva: - Mexico, already able to boast of success in terms of logistics and tackling the anti-globalists massed up behind the scenes of the most mediatised event of the day, had no real interest in opening its markets, which were so "painfully" liberalised under ALENA; - its main trade partner, the United States, did not want to open the debate on cotton, nor to move, nor to look like it had caused an agreement to fail or said no to four of the poorest countries in the world; - did the President want to "give a lesson for the future" to those who tend not to go into the concessions phase until they have passed the pre-agreed deadline? - and, another theory that has been advanced to the point of irony, maybe Mr Derbez has a thing about punctuality?
One thing, however, which comes out of Cancun quite clearly, even though "we will never know if agreement might have been reached if we had carried on": a few obstacles are out of the way and "progress is visible on each subject", said a source in Geneva, even on the agricultural chapter, where certain (non-European) sources think 85% of the work has been done. Certain members, such as Brazil and the Union came out with tactical posturing at the end of the week to show flexibility on all three pillars of the planned reform of agricultural trade; the Europeans did this on other issues too, such as the Singapore subjects which they said they were prepared to take separately, thus keeping only the least contentious subjects on the agenda, according to a Community source. It is also increasingly clear that the idea of prolonging the cycle beyond the deadline of 1 January 2005 is gaining ground, including in Brussels, where this was previously out of the question. On the substance, the agreement on the access by the poorest populations to essential medicines, which the developing countries managed to snatch this summer, is in the bag but remains to be implemented, said a Geneva source. As to the 22 points submitted to ministerial debates, the result remains hidden by the absence of a detailed balance sheet at the end of the session. Analyses are underway in many capital cities, also on how to follow up this failure. In Geneva, where negotiations will not start up again until next month (6 October), the job of the officials, Messrs Panichpakdi and Perez del Castillo, will consist in exploring compromise possibilities through a series of consultations in the aim of reaching "something" after the meeting of the WTO decision-making body (the General Council) scheduled for 15 December at the latest. This "something" will, in the best case, be "success where ministers have previously failed" or, at the worse, "a report with a working programme", it is explained in Geneva. For Europeans at any rate, "all the proposals that we have made remain on the table".
Ministers will no doubt briefly experience the surprise felt by most participants in Cancun at the Conference President's decision to put an end to this in the middle of the discussions, before seeking to clarify what did not work and the consequences to be drawn of such a failure. EUROPE has reason to believe that the Commission has already ruled out the thesis of conspiracy, of a premeditated fiasco, as well as the univocal explanation, in order to move toward several specific factors, the unfortunate combination of which seems more plausible for explaining the disastrous failure. It appears increasingly clear given the turn of events that the four protagonists, outside the EU, had more to lose than to gain in the event of success, namely the United States whose internal farm subsidies and cotton subsidies were attacked by almost everyone; India, which does not wish to open up its markets, whether they are agricultural or not, as it moves towards the electoral deadline of 2004; China, which believes it has already made enough concessions in the context of its recent accession to WTO; and Brazil that would no doubt have found it hard to maintain G20+ cohesion once an agreement on agriculture had been reached. Agriculture was the only rallying point of the G20+ until Cancun when the coalition swung to the political stage (almost crystallised, Community sources say, in this anti-American opposition which could not be expressed with sufficient weight at the UN to prevent the war in Iraq, causing in one go the North/South divide at the WTO and perhaps thus encouraging the African countries to toughen their positions). The request of the Four concerning cotton was seen by the countries targeted as a perturbing element all the more as DG Supachaï Panichpakdi himself went into the fray to urge the 146 to so something before taking command of talks as the facilitator to finally propose a compromise a little too broadly inspired by American ideas and which had the effect of provoking the Africans. The way the discussions unfolded was in itself chaotic and left too much to the ad hoc method in which the regional groups functioned, that it tended to strengthen. The Singapore issues became the ground for rhetoric deployed by many participants and the error was perhaps that of opening the last straight lap with them. From all this, the Commission finds subjects for reflection which should result in initiatives when the time comes, no doubt by the end of this year, it is explained. On the substance of discussions, it considers that the ball is now in other courts as the Union has already done a great deal in terms of flexibility to finally only obtain from its interlocutors unchanging answers to its priority questions (non-trade concerns in agriculture, geographic indications, industrial tariffs, services, Singapore). It is now a question of verifying with the Fifteen the answer to be given to questions that Commission Lamy raises, most of which were raised in general terms before the EP plenary session (see yesterday's EUROPE, p.11). The Commission, for its part, considers that the "patient", namely negotiations on the Doha Development Agenda, will remain on the table for some time to come and that it is now better not to insist on closing work in 2004 . In the Commission's view, one of the big losers in Cancun was the Cairns Group which seemed to be seeking its lost cohesion since the formation of the G20+ and its rise to power, whereas the Americans may still fall back on regionalism and bilateralism to pursue the free trade task in negotiations where they still bear more weight against the reduced number of discussion partners. As far as the functioning of the WTO is concerned, it already appears that accumulation of posts may be counter-productive, that the role of the President of the Conference must be rethought, at least in terms of power sharing. Finally there is the question of knowing what to do to save the peace clause whose expiry at the end of the year could open a fire fuelled by attacks in Geneva against farm subsidies from 2004 and fragilise, if not get shot of, not only the CAP but also the dispute settlement procedure.