11 December 2003

Speakers:
Carlo Binetti, Special Representative for Europe, Inter-American Development Bank (IDB)
Robert Devlin, Deputy Manager, Integration and Regional Problems Department, IDB
Gonzalo Fanjul Suarez, Research Co-ordinator, INTERMON OXFAM, Spain
Marcos Jank, President, Institute for International Trade Negotiations Studies (Icone), Brazil
Miguel Rodriguez Mendoza, Head, Geneva Office, Van Bael & Bellis Law Firm, former WTO Deputy Director-General
Discussant: Matthew Baldwin, Deputy Head of Cabinet of Commissioner Lamy, European Commission
Chair: Staffan Jerneck, Deputy Director and Director of Corporate Relations, CEPS

On December 11, a panel of distinguished speakers met at CEPS to share personal views on the future of the current round of the WTO negotiations - the Doha Development Round - with a particular focus on its consequences for Latin American countries.

As Mr. Binetti stressed at the beginning of the seminar, though the Cancun meeting has indeed been a missed opportunity to achieve progress towards a more balanced multilateral trade agenda, it’s failure does not mean we have reached the ’end of the road’ for the WTO. It is therefore extremely important to understand what really went wrong in order to move forward and allow the Doha round to continue. He furthermore stressed the point that, for some smaller countries, more convincing arguments for trade liberalization are needed.
 
Mr. Mendoza proposed some alternative suggestion, designed to assist completion of the Doha negotiations. First of all, a fundamental reform of agricultural trade is needed. According to his view, this is the most important - although the most difficult - step required to move the process forward and guarantee a successful ending to the Doha negotiations. In addition, he suggested it must be made clear that WTO rules apply to all internationally traded goods (both of industrial and agricultural nature) if the target of making substantial progress on market access, export competitiveness and internal support is to be achieved. Secondly, we have the problem that many very poor developing countries are not yet very comfortable with the current WTO system and were therefore content with the negotiations’ failure. For most LDCs free trade remains to become a reality. However, he did not supported differentiation between very poor developing countries and the rest with respect to WTO obligations.
 
Indeed such differentiation would not be an easy task, and could be achieved object only through more flexibility in the WTO rules. Finally, he pointed out some problems and misuse of the principle of the ’single undertaking, where all must be agreed or nothing agreed, as one of the main causes of current uneasiness towards the WTO by some developing countries.
 
Mr. Jank made three core points. Firstly, he shared the common view that Cancun was a lost opportunity, even more for Latin America, for which the success of WTO might have considerable impact on domestic growth. Secondly, he pointed out that, based on recent experience, developing countries will probably have a more active role in future negotiations. Thirdly, he stressed the importance of common trade rules, to deal with the explosion of bilateral uncoordinated trade agreements in the last decade. Though many countries seem to moving towards some kind of ’competitive liberalization’, systemic problems can be dealt with effectively only through some coordinated regulations.
 
Some criticism of the US-EU post-Cancun attitude came from Mr. Suarez. He said that they should act responsibly and recognise the right of developing counties to defend their own interests. He criticised the current dumping practices of developed countries in LDCs and the lack of any effort by the former to increase market access in developing areas.
 
Robert Devlin set out a model of the world trade system as a sort of four wheeled vehicle in which multilateral route represented one wheel, the regional and sub-regional route represented another while the unilateral and bilateral routes represent the other two. Essentially, in this vision the vehicle performs best when all four wheels are driving forward together while progress can still be made when one or more wheel is out of action. Nonetheless Mr. Devlin characterized the current progress of the world trade reform system as ’limping along on one wheel’.
 
Almost all contributors agreed that restoring momentum to the world trading system must involve repairing the multilateral pillar or ’wheel’ of the system as, for so long as this component is malfunctioning progress will only be made in piecemeal and often incompatible regional, bilateral and sub-regional negotiations. The danger that this poses for many (esp. smaller) LDCs is that the regional and sub-regional rout comes to be seen as the real way forward with the multilateral route useful over for setting rules and procedures.
 
Matthew Baldwin, summing up the view from the European Commission denied the suggestion that the EU’s text had been defensive and un-ambitious. Pointing out the key negotiating difference between the EU as a group of countries, and for example the US as a sovereign state, he made the point that the EU’s declared intentions were to be seen as serious commitments - which would be delivered upon if seriously taken up. He publicly regretted the fact that at Cancun, little or no serious attention was paid to taking the EU’s offers seriously. In attempting to re-assert momentum the EU team has gone ’back to basic’ in almost all areas and also engaged in multiple negotiations with for example both the Group of 90 small African and Caribbean producers and the Group of 21 alliance of larger LDCs, the emergence of which had apparently done much to bring Cancun to an early close. In conclusion Mr. Baldwin asserted that the Commission had made serious domestic progress and felt that with this renewed momentum progress was still possible. This would only take place however, if serious negotiators were to probe the EU position to find what was genuinely on offer. If so, sufficient concessions could be forthcoming to enable a deal in the genuine interests of most developing countries, with or without the contentious, so-called Singapore issues upon which the EU was certainly not fixated - but which in any case could be dealt with on a piece-by-piece basis if required.