THE EU TRADE COMMISSIONER LANDS IN NEW DELHI A WEEK AFTER BATTLEFRONT DOHA

Mr Lamy, 40 Indian Parliamentarians, and the New Round

Rohit Bansal

On Thursday, just a day after commerce minister Murasoli Maran has finished flaunting in Parliament the trophies he got back from Doha, European Union trade commissioner Pascal Lamy will perform a delicate diplomatic task. On Mr Lamy’s diary is a date with 40 Indian MPs, who serve on Parliament’s standing committee on commerce.
It’s anybody’s guess whose trophies Mr Lamy will choose to flaunt, his or Mr Maran’s.

Reproduced below is an ‘assessment’ circulated by Mr Lamy from the ‘battlefront’ on November 14, minutes after the ‘4th Harbinson draft’ became the Doha Declaration. The victories, or “significant and pleasing results”, as the effervescent commissioner put it, make for insightful reading. The emphasis has been added:

On sustainable development and environment
“The Doha Declaration strongly reflects EU’s calls for increased action in the WTO in favour of sustainable development and for the protection of the environment. WTO members agreed that sustainable development will be an overarching goal of the negotiations. The declaration provides coverage for precaution and labelling by reaffirming the right of members to take measures they deem appropriate in the field of health, safety and environmental protection. There are negotiations on a subject taboo until few years ago. By giving a special role to the WTO Committee on Trade and Environment (CTE), sustainable development and environmental concerns will be mainstreamed throughout the negotiations.” “The declaration shows that WTO members are serious about addressing the issues at the trade and environment interface. Also, they want to clarify the relationship between trade and environment and ensure that it is mutually supportive of sustainable development. This provides a sound basis for achieving progress on the key issues the EU has identified. Members want the WTO to play a positive role in evolving global governance”.

On trade and social development
“WTO members reconfirmed their commitment to core labour standards and cooperation between the WTO and the International Labour Organisation (ILO) as they had taken in the Ist ministerial at Singapore. The commitment to core labour standards and the promotion of these standards in the context of globalisation, including cooperation between these two organisations, are essential to the EU. In this context, the reference to the developments in the ILO process which took a decisive step forward this week on the social dimension of globalisation provides a useful basis for moving this issue forward in the way that ensures the possibility of the other international organisations, including the WTO, to contribute to this process”.

(In his speech alongside this ‘assessment’, Mr Lamy identified core labour standards “as one area, where I am not happy,” though he “managed to get the WTO to recognise for the first time the importance of the social aspects of globalisation, before there was simply not time to get any more”).

On services
“Our objectives in the field of services have been fully achieved. Clear dates have been agreed for launching market access negotiations on services”.

On competition
“The Doha Declaration sets, for the first time ever, the objective of establishing a multilateral framework on competition policies. This should contribute towards the more effective application of domestic competition regimes, and be of benefit to consumers worldwide. Even if negotiations will be preceded by a preparatory phase until the 5th ministerial, there is clear commitment to launch such negotiations at a certain date and the issue will fall within the single undertaking”.

On investment
“The Doha Declaration sets, for the first time ever, the objective of establishing a multilateral framework aimed at improving the conditions for foreign direct investment world-wide. Decision and timings as for competition”.

On trade facilitation
“The negotiating mandate reflects the essential objective of simplifying customs and related trade procedures, including transit measures. While the EU would have preferred to start negotiations at once, we have nevertheless an unambiguous commitment to negotiations within the single undertaking of the Round. This was our main aim. WTO commitments provide also the key to unlocking meaningful levels of assistance to build capacity in developing countries where outdated and cumbersome procedures are a brake on trade and development”.

On government procurement
“By obtaining a mandate to negotiate from the 5th ministerial a multilateral agreement on transparency in government procurement, the EU will contribute to build a set of rules obliging all public entities to procure in a transparent and open manner. This is a necessary first step that would facilitate further implementation of other international instruments on government procurement such as any development of procurement rules under the GATS or the GPA”.

On WTO rules; FTAs and RTAs
“The EU welcomes the possibility of a balanced negotiation on WTO rules to take place, that will meet the demands of developing countries and allow them to search for improvements to existing WTO Agreements without calling into question their basic principles. Our aim will be to ensure that these instruments will continue to provide relief for the efforts of unfair trade practices and at the same time any future rules on trade defence (anti dumping, subsidies, or safeguards) would reduce the scope for abuse of those instruments and ensure that partners adopt the same strict standards as the EU.”

“As regards regional trade agreements (RTAs), the EU objective to start negotiations for clear and quite strict rules defining the conditions to be met for free trade agreements (FTAs) to be WTO-compatible has been agreed. We are perfectly happy to see a fish negotiating mandate which straddles the subsidies and environment fields”.

On market access
“The negotiating mandate reflects the essential objective of reducing and where possible eliminating tariffs. It meets the aim of no a prior exclusions from the excercise, while focussing also on the reduction of peak tariffs and high tariffs, in both of which areas we have clear export interests, as do many other WTO members.”

What then is the import of the trade commissioner’s ‘assessment’? First, Mr Lamy hasn’t mixed too many niceties with the real message on his mind, that of bringing in the linkage between ‘sustainable development’ and trade. Two, that the EU believes it has “now reached agreement on a Declaration that constitutes an extremely solid basis for a new set of WTO negotiations...(and) call it a Round , or whatever you like; it is a very significant and very pleasing result”.