WTO talks ‘in danger of collapse’

WORLD trade talks are on the verge of failure, warned top businessman and ex-EU Commissioner Peter Sutherland in Dublin last weekend.

The EU’s current offer in the talks, to cut food import tariffs by 46% on average, would dramatically reduce EU meat prices, and lead to the loss of up to 600,000 jobs as the EU cuts back meat production, according to European meat processors.

But the negotiations on agricultural trading, and the entire Doha round of World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks, are in imminent danger of collapse before their May 2006 deadline, says Sutherland, who was the founding director general of the WTO in 1995.