Brussels, 28/08/2009 (Agence Europe) - With, he says, the current crisis allowing the shackles of a doctrinaire approach to be thrown off, French President Nicolas Sakozy has called for reform of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) following further reflection on world governance. Sarkozy wants to see international trade rules, labour law and concern for the environment to enjoy equal status on the multilateral level. Such was the message from his speech delivered to the Annual Conference of Ambassadors in Paris on 26 August. “What is happening is completely schizophrenic. At the WTO the word is: 'competition at all costs, no more support for agriculture' and at the FAO (United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation): 'more agriculture'. Who can make any sense of this? It's the same people talking, but the message is completely different. Is it not time to bring things together to send out a coherent message? The increasing number of international organisations is in itself a real problem,” he said. The French head of state argued that it was time to “wind up the accounts of a bygone age and lay the foundations of a new economy and a new world”. “The WTO cannot be defined solely by the criteria for world trade. There are basic social standards, which France did not invent: they are those set out by the ILO (International labour Organisation) and environmental standards that will be set by the World Environmental Organisation after the (UN) Copenhagen conference (on climate change),” he went on, before concluding, “That is the new world governance. We will put an end to a form of schizophrenia in the international community, we will correct the excesses of the commoditisation of the world by putting labour law, environmental law and trade law on an equal footing. I can see no reason why it should not be possible to do for labour law and environmental law what has been done for trade law”. (E.H./transl.rt)