Brussels, 09/05/2007 (Agence Europe) - A delegation from the European Parliament international trade committee, led by Ignasi Guardans Cambo (ALDE, Spain) and made up of Cristiana Muscardini (UEN, Italy), Ole Chritensen (PES, Denmark), Giorgios Papastamkos (EPP-ED, Greece) and Zbigniew Zaleski (EPP-ED, Poland) met representatives of the WTO secretariat, including its director general Pascal Lamy, diplomats involved in the Doha negotiations, former and current chairmen of the WTO General Council (Malaysian Muhamad Noor and Norwegian Erik Glenne respectively) and of the WTO Dispute Settlement Body (Australian Bruce Gosper and Mr Goor respectively) and the director general of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Juan Somavia. Discussions centred on the Doha Round, WTO reform and links between employment, labour standards and international trade.
Doha negotiations - In addition to Mr Lamy, the EP delegation met the ambassadors to the WTO of the G4 group - Eckhart Guth (EU), Peter Allgeier (United States), Paulo Mesquita (Brazil) and Ravi Bangar (India) - who brought them up to date on efforts “to find enough of a convergence on key issues (agriculture and non-agricultural market access) to allow an agreement by all members on negotiating 'modalities' by the end of July”. Messrs Guth, Allgeier, Mesquita and Lamy all displayed a “reasonable level of optimism” that the current negotiation process would lead to conclusion of the Round before the end of the year or at the start of 2008 at the latest.
The other negotiators met by the delegation were “much more sceptical”, says the mission report. This was particularly so for the new and former chairmen of the WTO General Council, Messrs Noor and Glenne, who appeared “very fatalistic”, and, in Mr Glenne's case, only preoccupied with “avoiding too spectacular a collapse by managing some sort of 'soft landing' for the DDA” (Doha Development Agenda). The ambassadors of the ACP countries also expressed definite scepticism, accusing the G4 countries of having completely lost sight of the development dimension of the Round and noting the increasing risk of an unfavourable agreement being forced down their throats under pressure of deadlines.
Mr Allgeier told the EP delegation that the US administration's Trade Promotion Authority (TPS) would expire on 30 June, without any possibility of its being extended. From 1 July, US diplomats to the WTO would negotiate without the coverage of a TPA. The European delegation was given assurances, however, that the Bush administration and the new Democrat majority in Congress were trying to find a compromise that would allow a new TPA to be adopted. This compromise depends in part on the Bush administration's commitment to insert appropriate environmental and labour rights clauses in regional and bilateral agreements negotiated by Washington.
WTO Reform - Ahead of the presentation of Cristiana Muscardini's own initiative report, reform of the WTO, the multi lateral institution which governs world trade, was also among the topics for discussion in Geneva. The European delegation was confronted with reluctance on the part of most of its interlocutors to engage in a substantive discussion on WTO reform “as long as no final outcome has been reached in the DDA negotiations”, the mission report notes. “All of them agreed, however, that undertaking an informal reflexion on this subject two years and a half after the publication of the 'Sutherland report' was indeed useful, and that many lessons could - and should - be drawn from the negotiating process as conducted thus far,” the report adds. Most of the diplomats met by the European delegation “appeared convinced that any radical changes to the current WTO decision making process, based on the rule of consensus, would be extremely difficult to consider”. They felt, however, that it would be possible to improve the decision-making process in things like inclusiveness (a priority for the ACP countries), external transparency (a US priority) and the role of the WTO secretariat (which Mr Lamy would like to strengthen. They also stressed that, following the failure or modest success of the DDA, members of the WTO could also reconsider the concept of negotiating rounds of multilateral trade talks, involving many countries and many topics on the basis of a “single undertaking” and explore instead the possibility of having more frequent recourse to sectoral and/or plurilateral negotiations. Diplomats also stressed the “informal but decisive” role played by regional or interest groups (G4, G6, G10, G20, G33, G90, Cairns Group). While acknowledging parliaments' contribution to the work of the WTO, all of the EP delegation's interlocutors appeared reluctant to consider giving the WTO a formal “parliamentary dimension”. Finally, Pascal Lamy suggested that, to give Ms Muscardini's report on WTO reform maximum impact, the “ideal timing” would be “just after” the conclusion of Doha negotiations, at the start of next year according to the WTO director general's forecast. (eh)