Being realistic. Whilst waiting for the Constitution to be submitted to national ratifications, the new EP to settle in and the new Commission President to be formally appointed, the EU is to return to "current affairs". These are many and weighty. Internationally, the most urgent are negotiations with Mercosur and the WTO's "Doha cycle". If there are no significant results in the coming weeks, these major negotiations will start to stagnate, due to the international calendar (elections in America, new EU negotiators) and various other factors. I can confirm an impression I voiced in this column on 21 April: the (too short) windows of opportunity and the (serious) differences of opinion do not give much hope for overly impressive results. If we are to make progress, an act of course and of realism is needed: curtail the aspirations.
Speeches on goodwill to conclude and debates on the technical details hide (albeit badly) a reality which should be applied to some of the essential talks. On the EU-Mercosur negotiations, the situation is relatively simple: the EU should not, because it cannot, agree to what Brazil and Argentina are asking for in the agricultural sector; for their part, the Mercosur countries cannot accede to all the EU's requests on public procurement, financial services, banking, insurance, telecommunications, maritime transport, investment, industrial customs tariffs, the agro-food sector. On the Doha cycle, ambition has already been downsized: the so-called "Singapore" subjects have virtually been shelved. But this is not enough: the "Cairns" group, and that of "the 20" must reduce their agricultural demands. If the cycle is to be saved, there is no other way forward than to bring it down to its priority dimension: a raft of preferential and one-way measures in favour of the poorest countries. The remainder- mutual accusations, excessive and unrealistic demands, big dreams- are just words to hide reality. Let's look a bit closer.
A fiction. The Mercosur dossier is a victim of a conceptual fiction, that is, respect for WTO rules, which only allow commercial preferences if the point of arrival is a free-trade zone, in which basically all obstacles to trade have been removed, in accordance with a strict pre-established timetable. This would be the death knell for Europe in the agricultural sector, and for Mercosur countries in the industrial and service ones. So we pretend. We play a game of reciprocal offers with limited and carefully controlled concessions, which we try to make equivalent. In the agricultural sector, the EU offers liberalisation on minor products (eggs, flour), customs reductions for fruits and fruit juices, the increase of certain quotas and the creation of new ones. This doesn't come close to genuine free trade (and for a reason). These offers are seen as insufficient by the other side, but already as excessive by France and European farming organisations, and also (on the bio-fuels aspect) by the ecologists. The situation is similar for the other side on industrial customs duties, public procurement, services.
The European agricultural world states that with its offers, the Commission intends to make farmers pay for the advantages the industrial, the bankers, the hauliers, et al are looking for in the south American markets. On bio-fuels, the real scope of the offer on bio-ethanol should be checked: is it true that the degree of openness of the EU market offered by the Commission would mean the end of any desire to develop bio-fuels in Europe? (nobody could invest in it if needs are already covered by imports from brazil", say the Greens). The Commission disputes this.
Open prospects. Conclusion: by being reasonable, the EU and Mercosur can do a lot together in many fields: economic co-operation, investment, research, assistance. Even in trade, change is possible, as long as we forget the absurd idea of a free-trade zone. But on current bases, things would be going from deception to deception.
What remains for the WTO. Here, the reduction of ambitions should be even more radical. To start with, the European negotiators (Pascal Lamy and Franz Fischler) had stressed that the opening up of the European markets presupposed the respect for environmental and sanitary standards, the protection of appellations of origin, the rights of all people to autonomy in their food. It's not currently a matter of failing to meet standards; the EU's initial ambitions have been swept aside. In agriculture, the essential but reasonable objectives remain searching for advantages for the poor countries (first and foremost, keeping preferences to their advantage), and the possibility for the rich countries to give up export subsidies. "And all the rest is literature", as Paul Verlaine once said. (F.R.)