Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-07-06-Speech-4-057"
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"en.20060706.5.4-057"2
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".
Madam President, between 29 June and 1 July, Mariann Fischer Boel and I attended ministerial meetings in Geneva on the Doha Round of trade talks. We also met and remained in contact with the MEPs who were present in Geneva during those days. I would like to thank the honourable Members of this House for their effort and for their commitment. It is much appreciated by the Commission.
The possibility of a meeting of Heads of State and Government in some formation or another to take forward the negotiations around the time of the G8 meeting in ten days is not ruled out. There is a lot at stake here and we shall have to work very hard and very fast in the coming days and weeks. Failure of the DDA would have severe consequences, not least for the developing countries. This is an opportunity that will not repeat itself to open markets further, to reduce subsidies, to strengthen world trade rules and to make a real contribution to growth in the poorest countries in the world. This is why these multilateral negotiations continue to be the EU’s top trade priority. No number of bilateral deals would have the same widespread effects or benefits.
This being said, our trade agenda goes beyond achieving a successful Doha deal. In the months ahead, the Commission will define its commitment to boosting our competitive performance at home and abroad and this will be set out after the summer in an overarching Commission communication on the external aspects of Europe’s competitiveness. This will examine how future trade policy can contribute to our internal competitiveness policies and what the priority tasks are for us to build new and secure global markets for our investment and trade.
This will include a new strategic approach to market access, including non-tariff barriers, the consideration of new bilateral and regional policy approaches and the examination of our political and economic ties with China. This is not, however, an alternative to the DDA: it is an extension of a successfully concluded end to this round. Our immediate priority remains, therefore, to bring about the necessary political engagement by all governments to negotiate a balanced and ambitious end to the DDA.
We will, of course, take a closer look at the social dimension of globalisation. Modern social systems and a better quality of life are not optional extras: they are an integral part of a formula to deliver a lasting political response to globalisation and it is this goal, above all, that remains at the heart of my mandate.
The ministerial meetings did not find agreement on the main parameters for reductions in tariffs and subsidies, in agriculture and industrial goods, the so-called modalities of the agreement which are necessary to move to the final stage in the talks.
We met several times with the ministers from the Group of Six, that is ourselves in Europe, the United States, Brazil, India, Japan and Australia. We also met in the Green Room format of 30 ministers and in the Trade Negotiations Committee, which brings together the entire WTO membership. There was no shortage of ministerial meetings and encounters, but the encounters were frankly better than the quality of the negotiations that took place within those encounters.
We went into the discussions stressing the EU’s agreement with a principle expressed by Pascal Lamy beforehand, that the landing zone for an agreement would require effective real cuts in farm subsidies by all and real cuts in both agricultural and non-agricultural market access – real cuts in tariffs. We then specified that to capture such a basis for agreement we would on our side be prepared to move towards and close to the level of average cuts in farm tariffs proposed for developed countries by the G20, provided that others moved in concert, with a similar level of ambition in other areas of the negotiation.
We made it clear to our partners that we would not be prepared to meet every G20 demand, in particular on the structure of the cuts. We pushed hard to establish a clear correspondence between the effort that we would make in agricultural market access and the effort that the United States in turn would have to make in the reduction of domestic subsidies close to the G20 levels of average cut by us, to be matched by close to G20 reductions of trade-distorting subsidies by the US.
The United States was the only major player to refuse to consider moving on this basis and declined to signal any room for further movement within this landing zone. Indeed, they demanded further significant moves by others in order only to sustain their present offer, which all others regard as insufficient.
We also made it clear that, if a negotiating landing zone was to be identified in agriculture, we would only take our position in this pillar to the limit of our flexibility if we got a fair result in non-agricultural market access, requiring real cuts in developed and advanced developing countries’ tariffs. That is economically doable and, I would argue, desirable for these developing countries and politically essential for us and for other developed countries. The United States’ unreadiness to engage stopped developing countries from making any move or showing any flexibility of their own.
The conclusions of the meeting therefore focused on the political handling of our failure to reach a breakthrough. All members reaffirmed a willingness to reach agreement by this summer. In this context G6 members first, subsequently backed by the broader membership in the Trade Negotiations Committee, asked the Director-General, Pascal Lamy, to intensify consultations and act as a catalyst for generating the basis for an agreement in the coming few weeks. He has not been asked to author a final agreement or provide a Dunkel-type text, like the previous Director-General at the end of the Uruguay Round, but instead to use his good offices to act as a go-between for a final agreement to emerge. That will require very active engagement by us with him and with the main players in the next ten days to two weeks.
Depending on progress made, it is likely that ministers will need to meet in a similar format towards or at the end of July to take the key decisions on modalities as well as to confirm progress made in the other key areas of the round, i.e. services, rules and the development package."@en1
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