MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

The “give and take” game moves to Geneva

The European Union members reached in Brussels a new “active and constructive” negotiation stand for the World Trade Organization, WTO, round that is scheduled to resume discussions next December 15 in Geneva.

After reviewing the European Commission's negotiation mandate, EU country members Foreign Affairs ministers emphasized that "commitment to multilateralism in trade policies", must be seen as a priority of EU foreign relations.

However the new EU initiative keeps the agriculture proposal, which helped stall the previous WTO Cancun talks last October, unchanged but does offer some concessions in the so called "Singapore issues" related to environment, regulation of foreign investment and competition matters.

"These negotiations offer great potential for promoting long term economic growth, stimulating trade and investments, even in developing countries, promoting sustainable development and addressing the challenges as globalization as well as contributing to achieving the poverty reduction objectives of the Millennium Summit", added the ministers statement.

Regarding the EU and US farm subsidies reduction proposal, challenged by developing countries who demand their full elimination, Europeans claim that WTO agriculture negotiations still have to begin and therefore they have no formal reply to their original proposal.

Regarding Singapore issues, (investments, competition, government purchasing transparency and facilitating trade), which actually blocked the recent Cancun WTO October talks, European are willing to discuss it individually, but out of the global agreement.

As to the environment and trade rules the EU wants a political commitment, and with the geographic origin denominations, an intermediate solution with an international registrar of geographic origin denominations is proposed, which would not necessarily be compulsory.

The EU initiative follows recent comments from Carlos Perez del Castillo the WTO General Council chairman who said that "unless there's a dramatic movement in positions", the plan to restart trade talks in Geneva on December 15 is doomed.

Developing nations and rich nations remain confronted over the scope of trade negotiations and the need to reduce agricultural subsidies.

EU' trade commissioner Pascal Lamy said he hoped any concessions would be matched by greater flexibility, "the balance between give and take has to be kept".

But even in the most optimistic scenario the coming Geneva talks will be overshadowed and limited by significant events such as the United States 2004 presidential election and the confrontation among the world's main trade powers: US with EU, Japan and China over steel tariffs; US and China over textiles and Chinese monetary policy; US and EU over GM food. Besides, the Bush administration not too happy with WTO procedures, has began a policy of securing bilateral trade agreements particularly in Latinamerica.