Clock is ticking as WTO talks run out of time
Negotiators face a looming deadline in Hong Kong from December 13 to 18, when the WTO wants to approve the broad outlines of a trade deal at a ministerial meeting.
With the clock ticking toward the Hong Kong meeting, senior trade officials and ministers from Australia, Brazil, the EU, India and the US are scheduled to meet in London on November 7, and at the Geneva headquarters of the WTO on November 8.
But trade experts were pessimistic this week about negotiators reaching a deal in time for the ministerial meeting in Hong Kong, where the framework deal on trade in farm produce, services and manufacturing is supposed to be struck.
Japan backed the EU proposal to get WTO moving, but world trade specialists said it had been weakened by fierce opposition from France, whose president, Jacques Chirac, promised to block any proposals that would substantially reduce government subsidies to farmers.
EU Trade Minister Peter Mandelson said his offer to cut the average EU agricultural tariff by 46% will also reduce the EU's number of specially-protected sensitive products, and expand permitted quotas of imports even of these products.
"Crucially, it will not wipe out the special preferential access to Europe's markets currently enjoyed by the world's poorest and most vulnerable countries", he said.
"We will not simply meet the demands of those who have the loudest voices. Nor will we take risks, either with our own farmers' livelihoods or those in the developing world", he said.
He said American proposals to cut agricultural tariffs by 90% would devastate some farm sectors in Europe and cause serious loss of jobs and livelihoods.
Even the 75% cut proposed by the G20 would have a hugely damaging effect on preferential access and farm livelihoods in Europe and elsewhere, according to Mandelson.
He said the EU is offering substantial new market access for importers, while exposing EU farmers and farmers in African, Caribbean and Pacific countries that export to Europe to a steep but carefully graduated reduction in their protection.
It had already offered to eliminate all export subsidies, assuming others do the same.
"Obviously the offer will only bind the EU as part of a final Doha Round agreement", explained Mandelson. "The EU reserves the right to withdraw this offer at any time. Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed."
In industrial trade, the EU wants agreement before Hong Kong on a progressive formula that cuts into applied tariffs.
In services, the EU wants negotiations and ambitious mandatory country targets for liberalisation.
The EU also wants an international register protecting Geographical Indications (GIs) in all WTO member states. Changes in WTO rules and development aid are also demanded.
