Negotiation setbacks ease trade deal worries for Irish farmer organisations
The organisation is attempting to complete negotiations on the Doha Development Round, which was launched in 2001 with an explicit focus on addressing the needs of developing countries.
Last Thursday, WTO Director-General Robert Azevêdo admitted to failure in concluding the negotiations to adopt the Protocol of Amendment on the Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) by July 31, as agreed at the WTO Ministerial Conference in Bali last December, with a view to getting substantive negotiations on the Doha Round under way.
The latest setback was due to India linking its approval to a permanent solution to the treatment of farm price support programmes.
International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) Ireland Secretary General Ian Talbot said, “There’s huge frustration that a deal with the potential to inject a US$1 trillion stimulus into the global economy has been blocked by a diplomatic standoff in Geneva.”
However, the setback is likely to come as a relief to Irish farmer organisations, who have been warning for decades of dire consequences of world trade agreements, such as loss of EU farmer subsidies.
It was a bad week also for others pushing a free trade agenda, particularly in regard to agriculture, within the EU and globally.
There were reports out of Germany that legislators there would hold up the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), thought to be a done deal, due to it unsatisfactory investor protection measures. However, the EU’s ambassador to Canada played down these reports.
Hopes for a definite timeline for EU-Mercosur talks were dashed by South American regional issues such as Argentina’s bond default; Mercosur’s direct discussions with the EU will now be delayed until 2015 — at the earliest — due to the forthcoming Brazilian elections.
Meanwhile, Russia has started banning imports of agricultural products from nearby nations such as Ukraine, Moldova, and Poland, seemingly in response to fresh EU sanctions.
And negotiations which started one year ago on a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) have also stalled due to disagreements, with the EU Ombudsman criticising the TTIP discussions for not being ‘transparent enough.
