Don't forget real goals. I doubt that the initiatives of Crawford Falconer, president of the agricultural negotiations committee in the Doha Round, are helpful in facilitating an agreement. Some readers will have perhaps understood that my use of the verb “to doubt” is a euphemism. I am in fact convinced that the effort by the New Zealand president will lead to nothing. The measures he has suggested will radically liberalise world agricultural trade to the benefit of a few major exporting countries, especially big trade interests. Unfortunately, for Falconer, the USA finds them unacceptable, as does Europe, Japan and above all, the developing countries. Subsidies to US farmers are likely to be around $15-13 a year, well below 19 billion, even though Washington had proposed a figure of 22 billion. The European Union is expected to reduce its internal subsidies to a percentage of between 70% and 80%. More importantly, it will be reducing its border protection duties from 50% at a general level, and between 65 and 85% on higher duties. Developing countries are expected to reduce their “agricultural” duties by an average of 36% but will be allowed to keep higher duties on a paltry 5-8% of tariff lines and only on the condition that they are regularly reduced (EUROPE 9417 and 9420, as well as yesterday's issue on the most recent developments in Geneva).
The way in which Falconer chose to carry out the Doha Round agricultural negotiations appears to me to be totally disconnected from humanity's current concerns. World agricultural activity should contribute to the real objectives of fighting food shortages, environmental protection, biodiversity, territorial balance and, in my opinion, to helping the people of each country ensure a reasonable level of food autonomy. Faced with such challenges, Mr Falconer only sees one goal: increasing the trade in agricultural products as much as possible. New Zealand certainly represents an example in more than one respect: it has been able to develop a competitive agriculture by safeguarding the environment and getting rid of (or almost) the use of chemicals. These results, however, should not justify the negligence of other demands, particularly the right of countries to relaunch and develop their subsistence farming. The WTO agricultural negotiations committee is, in my opinion, currently wasting time in fighting rearguard battles that contain a dual risk: of leading to other aspects of the Doha Round getting blocked, and accelerating negotiations for bilateral agreements outside of the WTO.
Trade volume is not the only goal. I would like to invite readers to look at the report the day before yesterday (EUROPE 9421) on the opening up of negotiations between the EU and South Korea. It confirms that despite all the right noises having been made in support of Doha, the industrialised countries are essentially concerned by questions that have been left out of multilateral negotiations: investment, public procurement and competition rules. This is already the case with the Euro-American partnership (see this column in EUROPE 9418), which will colour the direction of negotiations between the EU and Mercosur if we want these negotiations to be launched effectively. Conditions for trade are, in the end, more important than the volume of trade. The American decision to introduce complaints against China for violating intellectual property rules is backed up by the impressive (not to say staggering) amount of documentation that proves the seriousness and number of infringements to the point that the Chinese authorities (after the usual protests against the US initiative) did explain that they did not have a sufficient number of instruments to tackle the situation. Observers have pointed out that the Peking authorities are quite cooperative and make real efforts for combating the abuse, but the immensity of the territory and the multitude of piracy and counterfeiting methods prevent them from achieving more satisfactory results. The EU, Japan and Canada have begun procedures that will involve them in supporting US complaints. Expansion in trade, ok, but in the right conditions!
I am able to point out that there has been a simultaneous multiplication in the number of warnings and alarms being sounded in the EU with regard to certain aspects of the international trade in agricultural products, such as production conditions and security and infringements in the area of protected denominations of origin. The European Parliament agriculture committee's position on reform of the fruit and vegetable market indicates a return to greater protection and support for European production (see following pages). In farming, the expansion of trade is not the only objective.
(F.R.)