Brussels, 09/05/2005 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission has welcomed the “significant breakthrough” which the thirty principal member countries of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) made last Wednesday at the ministerial mini-session in Paris on the issue of converting specific agricultural customs duty into ad valorem equivalents (AVEs) as part of trade negotiations on the Doha Round. For nearly four months, this highly technical and complex point has been blocking all talks in Geneva. With this agreement on a system for the conversion into percentages of rates which are usually expressed in euros or dollars per tonne, the negotiations proper on the reduction of customs barriers in the field of agriculture can begin in earnest. “This agreement [prepared at an initial restricted meeting in Paris of the five main players of the WTO: EU, US, Brazil, India, Australia: Ed] will be a shot in the arm for agricultural discussions in Geneva and will increase the chances of a successful outcome of the WTO ministerial meeting in Hong Kong in December”, said the Commission in a press release. “The road is now clear for rapid and substantial progress of the Doha Round across the board, including services and manufactured goods”, said Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson, adding that this highly technical agreement had been made on the basis of a European proposal. However, Mr Mandelson added, the agreement “fully preserves the interests of the European Union”. “This is a compromise I have no need to apologise for because [the world] so needs the Doha Round”, added the Commissioner, who feels that if Europe “had not acted this way, negotiations would have derailed very quickly”. The Commissioner for Agriculture, Mariann Fischer Boel, also voiced her satisfaction that “our initiative managed to unblock” the situation on the conversion of the agricultural customs duty. The EU has shown its good faith and its will to find “imaginative solutions” to move forward the Doha negotiations, she said. The Director General of the WTO, Supachai Panitchpakdi, also voiced his relief: “We have just avoided disaster”. This compromise is “a necessary condition, but not enough” to pave the way for the Hong Kong ministerial session in December, warned the Brazilian foreign minister Celso Amorim. However, the Paris breakthrough “shows that we have the goodwill to roll up our sleeves to make compromises and move forward”, said the American Trade Representative, Rob Portman.
The agreement on the AVEs had already been accepted by the large agricultural powerhouses of the WTO (all of which were present in Paris) and by the main net importers of agricultural products (G10: Japan, Switzerland, Norway, Korea and Taiwan, amongst others), but has still to be approved by all 148 members of the WTO.