WTO talks must intensify: Mandelson

European Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson today warned that World Trade Organisation talks need to be intensified next year to meet the deadline for an accord.

In Berlin, he also said demands by some countries to liberalise agricultural markets were extravagant.

“We would have to intensify negotiations in the first quarter of 2006 in order to meet the present deadline for the Doha round,” he said just two weeks before trade ministers from 149 countries and territories are scheduled to meet in Hong Kong.

“Let me be clear that the European Union is totally committed to an ambitious and substantial conclusion of this trade round,” he said, adding that he hoped next month’s meeting was a success.

“Obviously there are no longer the same ambitious goals for the Hong Kong meeting. We are not aiming anymore for agreement.”

But he reiterated that “we are not putting another agricultural offer on the table ahead of Hong Kong”.

The meeting in Hong Kong is expected to end without any deal in December because officials are at loggerheads over different views on how to liberalise the agricultural as well as the services and industrial goods markets.

Many countries blame the EU’s position on farm tariffs for causing the collapse of global trade negotiations within the so-called Doha Round of trade talks.

“We should try to do even more than simply survive at Hong Kong,” said Mandelson, who was in Berlin to meet officials in the new German government. “What we want from Hong Kong is to create the best platform for final negotiations in 2006.”

He said the EU had moved to open up its agricultural market by cutting subsidies in the last few years but that the United States, Brazil, Australia, among others have demanded more access.

Mandelson said that previous talks had gone in the wrong direction.

“We have been too concentrated on agriculture, ignoring the equal and arguably greater development gains ... from growing trade in industrial goods and services,” he said.