Brussels, 20/12/2007 (Agence Europe) - Pascal Lamy, WTO Director General, welcomed the real progress made on the agricultural chapter of the Doha discussions during the last quarter 2007. He called, however, on negotiators from the 151 WTO member nations, on 30 November, to draw up the broad lines for a compromise by end February 2008 on the arrangements for trade liberalisation in farm products and manufactured goods (NAMA) with a view to completing the Round at the end of 2008. This is therefore the new deadline for talks which have dragged out since they began in 2001. Early 2007, however, everything pointed to the fact that talks would be concluded by the end of this year. Such hopes were swept away when, in Potsdam, Brazil and India at the head of the G-20 emergent countries banged the door on the last G-4 meeting, composed of the four main agricultural powers including the EU and the United States. Many then felt that this new disenchantment would bear a fatal blow to the Round -until the WTO leadership took hold of things mid-July.
The year 2007 had begun as 2006 had begun with the informal meeting end January of some thirty trade ministers on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos where unanimity between the heads of state and government present had been followed by a ministerial agreement for resuming formal talks after suspension of the Round was decided in July 2006 after talks broke down in Geneva end June. The trade ministers had, moreover, agreed to adopt a new negotiation strategy by tackling all the chapters of the round head on, i.e. not only agriculture but also NAMA and services, trade facilitation, and geographic indications and regulations. Mr Lamy confirmed on 7 February before the WTO General Council that talks should be resumed in all areas, stressing that the political conditions were more promising for concluding the Round than they had been for a very long time.
During February, the negotiation process therefore forcefully resumed on both fronts at the same time: on the multilateral front at the seat of the WTO in Geneva, and on the bilateral front between the major trading powers. The aim of the G-4 was clear: - to find a four-way compromise on the thorny agricultural issue and on the opening of industrial markets to bring the whole of multilateral negotiations out of deadlock. Several weeks later, however, the French minister for trade at the time, Christine Lagarde, put the cat among the pigeons by stating that she was in favour of delaying conclusion of the Round until 2009 in order to allow revision of what she felt were “slightly outmoded” parameters that had been the focus of talks since 2004: - the environment, the role of the emerging countries and the objective of the large agricultural productions. Her suggestion probably did not, however, receive the echo that it deserved at the time.
At the end of March, the G-33 meeting in Djakarta seriously rekindled the hope of a compromise being reached when the developing countries - “friends of special products” - agreed to considerably reduce their list of special (sensitive) products. There was even greater optimism when, after an official visit to Washington early April, the Brazilian president, Lula, announced that a compromise could be found within 30 days. Meeting in New Delhi on 11 and 12 April, the G-4 decided to intensify talks to reach a compromise by end June. By 1 May, the WTO chairperson for agriculture, Crawford Falconer, who had promised to provoke WTO member nations with painful targets, turned words into deed by enjoining the United States to agree to a major cut in its domestic subsidies. The G-4 met again in Brussels mid-May and then again in June, in Brussels and London, before a decisive meeting from 19 to 22 June in Potsdam. With a commitment reiterated by the G8 and the five large emerging countries (South Africa, Brazil, China, India and Mexico) in Heiligendamm, and despite a coordination meeting of developing countries on 11 June in Geneva, which anticipated the inflexible attitude adopted in Potsdam by Brazil and India, Pascal Lamy was more confident. The meeting in Potsdam turned out an overwhelming failure. Albeit very close to a compromise on agriculture, the G-4 broke up with Brazil and India seemingly unable to return the favour to the EU and to the United States after their concessions on farm trade, refusing to open up their industrial and services markets more widely. The EU had, however, been ready to deal its last hand on access to the agricultural market and the United States had agreed to the principle of reducing its domestic subsidies.
Pascal Lamy was quick to take matters in hand. The chairpersons of the committees on farm talks and NAMA, Crawford Falconer and Don Stephenson, then put ambitious compromise texts on the table on 17 July on the basis of which the delegations have been working ever since to find an agreement. Last week, Mr Falconer announced that, since September, he had conducted nearly 120 hours of bargaining between the delegations at the agricultural negotiating committee. It cannot be denied that the Doha Round is still very much alive but the failure of Potsdam has meant that talks have broken down between the major trading powers and that, henceforth, the expected compromise now only hangs on the outcome of the multilateral process in Geneva. A date is therefore set for February 2008 for publication of the revised Falconer/Stephenson compromise texts. (E.H.)