Mandelson the biggest WTO loser
But there’s only one guaranteed loser - Peter Mandelson, the European Trade Commissioner.
Even his own have turned against him, with the Financial Times in London saying he could have played his cards more adeptly, allowed the EU to become almost totally isolated over farm trade, and failed in his attempts to focus the agenda on other aspects of the negotiations.
The FT said he sought repeatedly to portray Brussels as the friend of poorer countries, many of which have preferential market access to the EU, but most of these countries ganged up against the EU over agriculture negotiations in Hong Kong.
“The strain of the talks clearly took its toll on the former Downing Street spin doctor. He complained in public about being expected to work such late hours and often appeared testy and abrasive in his dealings with other ministers and with the media”, the Financial Times observed.
However, the Times of London was sympathetic to Tony Blair’s former minister, saying the EU’s desperation to cling to farmer protection at the expense of poor nations and European consumers was not really Mandelson’s fault, and he had to negotiate under disgraceful pressure from the French.
IFA President John Dillon said the incompetence of the EU negotiators and the flawed tactics pursued by Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson were particularly frustrating.
He certainly won’t be confident of a favourable outcome if Mandelson heads up the EU team in a do-or-die attempt to get a WTO agreement next year. Most observers agree that an agreement is a long shot hope, because none of the big bargaining issues - agriculture, industrial tariffs or services - was advanced at Hong Kong, and the trade round was “still breathing, but only just.”
As Mandelson said: “If we didn’t make the conference a success, we certainly saved it from failure.”
