Mexicans fail to break WTO impasse

A COMPROMISE document drawn up by Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez failed to break an impasse over farm subsidies and other contentious issues at the five-day world trade talks which were scheduled to end in Cancun yesterday.

However, trade ministers from 146 countries didn’t give up hope of averting failure and were planning to work late into the night to try and devise a framework for agreement. Agriculture Minister Joe Walsh said Irish farmers would lose out if the proposals went ahead.

“The paper crosses several red lines the EU has clearly set out,” said EU Farm Commissioner Franz Fischler.

The proposals were also firmly rejected by Irish farm leaders in Cancun.

IFA president John Dillon said the complete abolition of export refunds could cost Ireland at least half a billion euro in lost business. It would result in 20,000 farmers being driven off the land, mainly in the West and in disadvantaged areas, and would result in the loss of up to 10,000 jobs in the beef, dairy and sugar processing industries.

Mr Dillon said there was a heavy onus on Franz Fischler not to go one inch beyond the Luxembourg mid-term agreement.

ICMSA president Pat O’Rourke said the compromise paper would, if adopted, inflict huge losses in the farming and food sectors in Ireland. He said it calls for the complete elimination of export subsidies to certain markets and for even greater market access.

It also provides an open door for the WTO to attack and dismantle some of the direct payments recently agreed in the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

“The proposals in the paper are no basis for any agreement and must therefore be rejected by Ireland and the EU,” he said.

ICSA president John Deegan said family farms cannot be sacrificed in the interests of big business. While everybody would like to see the poorest nations develop and become richer, the way to achieve this is not through impoverishing family farms in Europe, he said.

However, poor and developing nations said in Cancun the proposal did not put enough pressure on the United States and the EU to slash farm subsidies.

Trade Minister Michael Ahern told a plenary session of the conference that Ireland is strongly committed to respond to the concerns and ambitions of developing countries.