Brussels, 21/06/2007 (Agence Europe) - Nothing was getting out of Potsdam in Germany from Tuesday's meeting (behind closed doors) between leading G4 negotiators, trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson and his US, Brazilian and Indian counterparts, Susan Schwab, Celso Amorim and Kamal Nath, respectively. The media had effectively been excluded from discussions. This was suddenly shattered on Thursday afternoon when Indian and Brazilian negotiators decided to leave the negotiations early. During a joint press conference with his Indian counterpart, the senior representative of G20 countries, Mr Amorim declared, “it was not worth continuing negotiations with what was on the table”. The Brazilian negotiator also explained that agriculture, the main stumbling block in the Doha negotiations launched in 2001 were the source of the failure at the Potsdam meeting expected to end on Saturday.
The stakes at the discussions were enormous because they involved the “big four” finding an intermediate compromise on modalities for liberalising trade in agriculture and manufactured products (NAMA), which could have served as the basis of a multilateral agreement. It is now difficult to imagine how 150 member countries from the multilateral organisation can close the round by the end of 2007 with an overall agreement in July.
Insufficient progress for overall convergence
In a declaration published at the end of the ministerial, Peter Mandelson stated, “We have covered a wide agenda and gone across the whole terrain of the negotiations. We have not reached convergence on our whole agenda but we have made progress on some issues including agricultural market access and subsidies, export competition and export subsidies. We also had good substantive discussions on services, rules…” The progress was, however, insufficient to enable G4 members converge, “on the big numbers in the triangle of domestic support, AMA, NAMA”, he added. The trade Commissioner, however, affirmed that G4 members now had, “a broad landing range in agriculture” to reach a compromise that is, “fair and forthcoming to developing countries and takes to the limit what the EU can do”.
Nonetheless, Mr Mandelson regretted that, “we cannot negotiate with ourselves”. He criticised the lack of clarity in the negotiations on industrial products, a chapter in which he said there was no common ground, “without which it would not be possible to find a reasonable trade off. The Commissioner for trade added that, “We were asked to put our last best agriculture offer on the table in the knowledge that this would not attract anything in return within the scope of our negotiation mandate and within the concept of proportional effort by all G4 members”.
Peter Mandelson speaks of refusal on part of emerging countries to contribute to DDA
“This is a development round. The developing countries - but only those in a position to do so - should make less effort and receive more than the developed countries. In the case of the poorest, they should only receive from a successful trade round. But, while in Europe, we are prepared to pay a lot - and more than others - we cannot do so for next to nothing in return. It emerged from the discussion on NAMA that we would not be able to point to any substantive or commercially meaningful changes in the tariffs of the emerging economies, as a reasonable return on what we are paying into the round”, Mr Mandelson continued, going on to add: “I would have hoped that this would have not been the last word exchanged in the G4 meeting today”.
The trade commissioner refused to interpret this failure as a “North-South showdown”. “Both the developed world and the fast growing competitive countries of the developing world must create trade-offs for the most needy (…). That means lowering tariffs in the developed world and proportionally, over time, reducing them in developing countries who are in a position to do so. Something, incidentally, that will help spur their own economic reform and future growth”, Mr Mandelson concluded, before confirming that he will be presenting the results of the G-4 to EU trade ministers in Luxembourg on Monday. (eh)
European flexibility and Indian firmness, diplomatic sources say
Under cover of anonymity, several officials and diplomats had, during the night of Wednesday to Thursday, given the Associated Press agency a few elements on how discussions had progressed since Tuesday. According to these sources, negotiators first of all tackled, on Tuesday, the issue of US domestic farm subsidies. Although Brazil and the United States had hitherto always been in disagreement over the degree of concessions expected (Brazilia wants annual spending on US domestic support to have a ceiling ranging from between $12-15 billion compared to an offer from Washington amounting to $22 billion), the positions adopted by Mr Amorin and Ms Schwab are said to have been far closer to what the two countries had publicly announced. On Wednesday morning, the Union was flexible regarding access to the agricultural market saying it was ready to reduce the highest customs tariffs by 70%, i.e. 10 points more than in its offer of October 2005. It nonetheless said it hoped that its sensitive products (dairy product, beef and poultry) would only be subject to a 23.3% reduction. India, for its part, was less flexible on this issue calling for the list of its special products (sensitive products for the developing countries) to be kept at 20%. From Wednesday afternoon, discussions stalled on the NAMA chapter, with Brazil and India showing inflexibility over this question, proposing, in accordance with the complex “Switzerland” formula used to determine tariff reductions on NAMA, that a cooefficient of 30 be adopted compared to that of 35 recently defended by Mr Amorim. The developed countries, especially the Union and the United States, hope to limit to 10% for themselves and to 15% for the developing countries the maximum amount of customs duties on NAMA. (eh)