By Daniel Pruzin
GENEVA–Members of the World Trade Organization begin a week of talks Oct 4 in Geneva on agricultural trade which many diplomats are viewing as crucial to a successful outcome at the WTO’s Hong Kong ministerial in December.
Informal meetings of the WTO’s negotiating group on agriculture begin Oct. 4, with delegates under pressure to produce some narrowing of differences on outstanding issues which can provide positive input to a meeting of key trade ministers in Zurich on Oct. 10.
The Zurich meeting will be followed by a further hectic week of meetings in Geneva which will include a meeting of ministers from the Group of 20 developing country alliance and a Five Interested Parties (FIPS: the United States, European Union, Australia, Brazil, and India) dinner on Oct. 11; a meeting of the “FIPS-Plus” (FIPS plus a half dozen other countries) on Oct. 12; and a provision meeting of the Trade Negotiations Committee, the body responsible for overseeing the Doha Round of talks, on Oct. 13, which some ministers are expected to attend.
A further round of agriculture negotiations has also been tentatively scheduled for the week of Oct. 17 in Geneva to build on any momentum coming out of the ministerial discussions.
Lamy to Deliver Assessment
WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy is due to deliver an “stock-taking” assessment to member governments by the middle of October on the state
of the Doha talks and what he described as the “landing zone we’re aiming at” for Hong Kong. Lamy has also asked the chairs of the various Doha negotiating groups to outline by mid-November what specific and substantive results they believe can be achieved in Hong Kong in order to give the WTO chief adequate time to produce a draft ministerial declaration.
In informal preparatory discussions held Sept. 30 to exchange information and prepare for the week of farm talks ahead, the chairman of the agriculture negotiations, New Zealand’s WTO ambassador Crawford Falconer, said it was crucial that members start forging compromises before the Zurich meeting, otherwise the subsequent ministerial discussions and the Oct. 17 week of agriculture talks could be wasted opportunities.
Hardening Positions
The omens do not look good. Falconer said he detected a hardening in members’ positions in the wake of discussions in Paris Sept. 22-23 among key WTO members on farm trade, although he expressed hope that it was a hardening “before the final push” rather than “before the final retreat,” according to officials who attended the meeting.
The European Union and the United States both produced “scenarios” on possible outcomes in the key negotiating pillar of market access for the Paris meeting which highlighted deep differences between Brussels and Washington on the degree to which members should lower tariffs and open their markets to farm imports as well as they flexibility members should have to protect sensitive sectors from imports.
Falconer said there was an increasing awareness that the numbers for cutting tariffs–which were far apart–would have to be addressed with the number of products qualifying as “sensitive.” In addition to the figures, differences exist as to whether there should be flexibility within the tariff bands (as proposed by the EU), and whether tariffs should be capped (supported by the United States and accepted in principle by the EU, opposed by Japan and Switzerland).
In addition, a Sept. 29 meeting of senior trade officials from 13 member countries dedicated to discussions on agriculture revealed little movement in positions, with participants reacting to the scenario papers put forward by the EU and the United States in Paris and offering criticisms.
U.S., Brazilian Disagreement
Officials said the only notable development was a sharp exchange between the United States and Brazil on whether additional disciplines should be applied to the new “blue box” of domestic support, which the United States secured to accommodate its countercyclical payments. Brazil insisted that an Aug. 2004 framework agreement for advancing the Doha talks mandates additional disciplines on countercyclical payments under the new blue box, citing a WTO dispute ruling which
found that such payments to U.S. cotton growers had a distorting impact on trade.
Seiichi Kono, the Japanese official chairing the two-day senior officials meeting, said there was a “heightened sense of urgency” among the participating officials and a need for Geneva-based negotiators to come up with “meaningful options” for ministers to discuss during the week of Oct. 10.
“The coming two weeks will be crucially important,” he declared. Statements of good intention “now need to be turned into real action.”
Senior officials from the United States, EU, Japan, Brazil, India, Australia, Canada, Kenya, Hong Kong, Switzerland, Malaysia, Zambia and China took part in the Sept. 29-30 senior officials meeting, which also addressed the Doha negotiations on non-agricultural market access (NAMA), services, and development issues.
Comments are closed