Brussels, 30/07/2007 (Agence Europe) - The meeting of the WTO General Council on Friday 27 July brought to an end two weeks of intense negotiations at the organisation's Geneva headquarters, following the publication of draft compromises on the modalities for agricultural trade liberalisation and on industrial goods (NAMA), drawn up by the chairmen of the agriculture negotiations and NAMA committees, Crawford Falconer and Don Stephenson respectively (see EUROPE 9470, 9471 and 9476). WTO members, who now number 151 after the official accession of Tonga, agreed to meet again in September to continue their discussions and try to reach a compromise before the end of the year. Negotiations will be difficult, but WTO Director General Pascal Lamy remains confident.
Addressing the General Council on Friday, Mr Lamy welcomed member states' “high level of commitment” to concluding the Round. He nonetheless called on delegations to continue their examination of the Falconer/Stephenson compromise texts during the August break and to return on 3 September “prepared to engage in an intensive negotiation”, starting with agriculture, and followed later in the month by NAMA. Mr Lamy also called on delegations, after the summer break, to extend their discussions to the other parts of the Round: services, trade facilitation, rules, environment, etc. Commenting on the previous two weeks of discussion, he opined that “convergence is within our reach”. “It is also clear that there are some significant differences which remain to be resolved,” but “the distance left to go to achieve all of this is not so great,” he said.
While none of the major players or negotiating groups has rejected the proposals put forward by Messrs Falconer and Stephenson, most have expressed serious reservations. Despite the good will shown by Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson on agriculture (on 23 July, he told the EU Council that he felt the figure put forward by Mr Falconer for the reduction in European customs duties on agricultural products - within the range 52 to 53.5% - was “manageable”), at the WTO headquarters, the Commission expressed its concern with regard to sensitive products, like beef and milk. “Some parts of the proposals go beyond the red lines,” for example on sensitive products which Mr Falconer proposes to limit to 4 to 6% of the total tariff lines, a European negotiator who was in Geneva last week said.
Away from the thorny issue of agriculture, there is great tension over the NAMA chapter. Mr Stephenson's text is being attacked from all sides, by the developed countries, which feel it doesn't go far enough, and by the developing countries, which are very divided over the concessions they are prepared to make on industrial market access. Mr Stephenson's suggested industrial tariffs are based on a “Swiss formula”, with two different tariff reduction coefficients, one of between 8 and 9 for the rich countries and the other of between 19 and 23 for advanced developing countries. While Argentina, Bolivia and Venezuela have rejected Mr Stephenson's compromise text, the countries of the “NAMA-11” negotiating group, led by Brazil and India, were openly critical of a proposed compromise on NAMA which, by forcing developing countries to make drastic cuts in their customs duties on industrial products, would lead to “an unfair and disproportionate outcome to negotiations which would cause mass unemployment and de-industrialisation in (their) countries”. However, as already noted (see EUROPE 9456), there is no united front among the emerging countries, since China has welcomed the initial proposals which “are moving in the right direction, but must still be improved”. At the head of a group of eight countries, Chile, Mexico and Singapore, which have already said they were willing to make greater concessions on NAMA than the NAMA-11 countries, welcomed Mr Stephenson's text, saying it was a good starting point for future discussions. (eh)