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Wednesday, February 07, 2007
ANY thoughts that having the Democrats in control in the US would favour Europe in the Doha WTO negotiations have been quickly shattered.
The current round could even face obstacles from the Democrat controlled Senate in Washington, John Bruton, the EU’s Ambassador to the US, has warned.
The party is putting more emphasis on labour andenvironmental standards in bi-lateral agreements.
"If they put them into Doha they will run into difficulties as new matter on labour standards was excluded at the beginning of the Doha round. It would involve going back to first base in the negotiations and this is not viable," he told the Institute of European Affairs in Brussels.
Other experts acknowledge that the US is insisting on labour standards being part of their bi-lateral trade deals with other countries.
Europe’s best chance to conclude the Doha round depends on US President George Bush retaining his mandate that gives him a free hand to negotiate on trade, and allows the Senate to only agree or disagree with the final outcome.
The Bush administration last week released new proposals on agriculture, which were criticised by Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson and Agriculture Commissioner Marian Fischer Boel.
"If we are to have a successful outcome to the Doha round, the US will need to propose more ambitious cuts and disciplines in trade-distorting domestic farm subsidies," a statement from the two responsible for EU negotiating at Doha said.
They noted a modest shift towards more green direct payments but were stillexamining the proposals on counter-cyclical payments to see if they offered any genuine improvement.
They described the cuts in Loan Deficiency Payments — the basic safety net of the 2002 Farm Bill — as modest and said that key trade-distorting programmes for dairy and sugar remain virtually untouched.
They recognised that this was a first step towards Congress and noted that the proposals did not preclude further steps.
"We in the EU are already going through a painful process of reform, which allows us to offer to cut our trade-distorting domestic farm subsidies by 70%. There is a clear obligation on all of us in the developed world to move decisively in this direction," they said.
Mr Bruton said he believed that a giant free trade area between the EU and the US was not possible, but said a barrier-free transatlantic market where regulatory obstacles such as product testing twice must be eliminated and similar standards for company accounts and consumer protection for instance must be agreed.
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