Brussels, 17/05/2004 (Agence Europe) - The EU's offer to remove all export subsidies and give up on the idea of grouped negotiations on most of the regulation subjects (the so-called Singapore subjects), except for trade facilitation, has enabled the round of multilateral trade negotiations to be unblocked (EUROPE of 15 May, p.12). This has opened up the possibility of reaching a framework agreement on details of the Doha Agenda by the end of July. "The WTO volcano is smoking once again", said Commissioner Pascal Lamy on Friday.
The two days of discussions which were held in Paris on Thursday and Friday, at the sidelines of an annual ministerial meeting of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), confirmed the will of the EU and the US to make concessions of the "export competition" aspect of agricultural negotiations. The EU's offer on export subsidies was well received, and the US committed to "discipline" their aid (export credit and food aid). Robert Zoellick, the American negotiator, said that changes to the "Farm Bill" (the American agricultural bill adopted in 2002) were necessary. However, the days of talks failed to see progress on the two other agricultural chapters, domestic support and market access. On this last point (by far the trickiest), the G20 countries (Nigeria, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, China, Cuba, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Paraguay, Venezuela, the Philippines and Pakistan) announced that they will put forward new proposals in June. "We must go forward and sketch a negotiation framework on access to agricultural markets", said Mr Zoellick, describing himself as "confident" that the G20 countries "want to take their full role" in the relaunch of negotiations.
The EU and the US remained quite vague on their expectations from the non-agricultural field. They have indicated that they hoped to continue negotiations to reduce industrial customs duties and to liberalise services. The EU is also trying to persuade the G20 to rally to the idea of differentiated treatment in favour of the poorest countries, by further opening their markets to these countries. Furthermore, on the Singapore subjects, the EU and the EU agreed to open new negotiations purely on trade facilitation, but not on investment, competition and the transparency of public procurement. The refusal of certain poor and emerging countries to open negotiations on four subjects contributed to the failure of the conference in Cancun (Mexico) in September 2003.