Brussels, 14/05/2007 (Agence Europe) - This week is unlikely to be decisive in the future of multilateral commercial negotiations under the Doha Round, but may nonetheless be of crucial importance. The negotiators-in-chief of the commercial powers of the G4, European Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson, American Trade Representative Susan Schwab, Indian Trade Minister Kamal Nath and Brazilian Minister for Foreign Affairs Celso Amorim will be meeting in Brussels this Thursday and Friday to try to move towards agreement on a compromise on the details for the liberalisation of trade in agriculture. Before that, they will be taking part in an informal meeting in Paris on Wednesday, alongside their opposite number trade ministers from some 30 countries, on the sidelines of the ministerial meeting of the OECD, to be held in the French capital on 14-15 May.
With the objective of breathing new life into agricultural talks, whereas the G4 is struggling to reach a compromise on this plank, the new reference document of the president of the Committee on Agriculture of the WTO, Crawford Falconer, which was published on 30 April and has already been discussed at a technical level in Geneva (EUROPE 9417, 9420 9422), is likely to be one of the elements of discussion of the meeting of the G4 in Brussels. It is worth noting that by using a provocative tone and provocative figures, Mr Falconer has stepped up the pressure on the United States and the Union in particular, by urging Washington to reduce its internal support to agriculture (first pillar of the agricultural plank) to within a ceiling of $19 billion a year, and Brussels to reduce its highest agriculture customs duties (market access, second pillar) to within a scale of between 65 and 80%.
Although he had promised a revised text for 14 May, which would take on board the comments of the delegations at the meeting of the committee of agricultural negotiations in Geneva on 7 May, Mr Falconer did not distribute any new draft compromise in Geneva on Monday. As we were going to press, no clarification had been announced by the WTO headquarters as to how long this delay would continue. Furthermore, according to a source close to the dossier in Geneva, the president of the negotiations committee on NAMA (market access for non-agricultural products), the Canadian Don Stephenson, for his part closed a week of not particularly useful discussions on the details of the liberalisation of trade for manufactured products, last Friday.
Despite reactions best described as mixed (from both the developing and the developed countries, EUROPE 9420) to Mr Falconer's proposals, Director-General of the WTO Pascal Lamy stated last Thursday that he had observed the positions of the Europeans and the Americans growing closer together on the agricultural plank. The members of the G4 would like to achieve this kind of rapprochement before mid-June. For this reason, whatever the results of their discussions this week, the European, American, Brazilian and Indian negotiators-in-chief are already planning to meet in London on 10 June, ahead of a further meeting in the week beginning 14 June, the location for which remains to be confirmed. (eh)