EuropaWorld 9/11/2001 Is Doha Doomed?

Speaking to Journalists on the eve of his departure for the World Trade Organisation's Ministerial meeting in Doha, Qatar 9-13 November, the EU's Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy said "We're 80 percent of the way there," but went on to warn that it would not be easy to close the 20 percent gap. In this article for EuropaWorld Matthew Wootton explains why.

The WTO's membership of 142 countries appears potentially riven with disputes over the appropriateness of launching a new "round" of trade negotiations. Particular controversy surrounds the draft Declaration, designed to reflect the consensus view of the members, to the Ministers at the conference ,from the Chairman of the General Council, Stuart Harbinson, and Director-General Mike Moore.

Despite multiple objections from all comers except the US, Harbinson and Moore insisted on submitting an un-annotated report on their own authority, apparently stepping-out of the remit that the rules-based WTO allows them. This triggered a chorus of protests, claiming that the text was unrepresentative, requiring the addition of 'mental square brackets' before one could interpret it accurately. In the case of Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), concerning such matters as Aids-drug patents, differences were so severe that two parallel, alternative chapters had to be submitted on the same issue in order to reflect the two camps of irreconcilable opinion.

Even Pascal Lamy, the EU's thrusting trade commissioner, has complained that the text does not meet Europe's expectations on matters such as the environment and the relationship of the WTO with the International Labour Organisation (ILO) as regards basic labour standards. EU officials want the negotiations in Doha to cover a broad range of issues in order to dilute and counterbalance the difficulties they are facing in the debate on the key area of agricultural trade.

The EU, as well as Japan, South Korea, Switzerland, Norway and the US, all maintain systems of heavy state-subsidies for their farming sectors, with protectionist tariffs that have perversely risen in recent years. They are reluctant to relinquish these tariffs without compensation.

Meanwhile, the developing world, want to see existing trade agreements fully implemented before negotiating 'new issues' that could force them to liberalise their markets further. They want to see evidence of the rich countries permitting increased open access to their own markets. Many poor countries have complained of the white, Anglo-Saxon, male bias of the WTO Secretariat and the impossibly heavy work-programme placed on un-funded countries. Half the developing countries have no staff at all at the WTO's Geneva headquarters; by contrast the US sometimes has over 200.

One Third World diplomat, from a country that theoretically favours the new round, said that the programme "represented nearly 75 percent of US views, and the balance that of the European Union". The declaration has also come under fire from NGOs specialising in trade issues, who complain that it is biased in favour of industrialised countries.

In their zeal to present a unified agenda to the Ministers at Doha, the WTO chiefs appear to have set their members on an collision course. The negotiating agenda may be more comprehensive than ever before, but without consensus it will be difficult to complete. As a result the world trading system could face increasing hostility between its members with the more powerful developing countries increasingly challenging the interests of the developed world.