Key Notes

The WTO after Cancún

I. What the EU is doing

In 1999 the EU made preparations for the Third Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Seattle, USA, with the ambitious goal of a comprehensive new world trade round. Negotiations in almost all areas of international trade were intended to lead to further liberalisation in the international movement of goods and services. New rules on investment, competition law and procedural matters were to make the WTO an organisation capable of helping shape globalisation for the benefit of all its members.

As a result of various circumstances, agreement could not be reached with all the EU’s trading partners until two years later at the Fourth WTO Ministerial Conference in Doha, Qatar. In the meantime the EU had geared its offers in the negotiations even more closely to the needs of the developing countries and given them considerable assistance in preparing for the talks. The ‘Doha Development Agenda’ adopted in 2001 provides for a swift conclusion of negotiations. Under this agenda, the reciprocal opening up of WTO members’ markets is to be improved, multilateral rules on many economically important areas are to be agreed and, above all, better integration of the developing countries into world trade is to be achieved. Subsequently, the EU unilaterally opened up market access almost completely to goods from the least developed countries and cleared the way for an agreement by reforming its agricultural policy.

The Fifth WTO Ministerial Conference, held in Cancún, Mexico, in September 2003 was intended to set the course decisively for a timely conclusion of the Doha development round. Unfortunately, no agreement could be reached on the inclusion of the so-called ‘Singapore issues’, that is to say investment protection, competition law, transparency in government procurement and facilitation of market access. For this reason the conference ended in failure. The EU has since been seeking to revive the negotiations in many bilateral and multilateral talks.


II. The position of the EPP-ED Group

Since the beginning of the parliamentary term, the EPP-ED Group has actively followed the planning for the new WTO trade round. The report by Konrad Schwaiger (Germany) on the Commission’s negotiating mandate forms the basis for the position of the European Parliament. The idea of a free and fair world trade system based on clear rules, which are enforceable against each member through an impartial system for settling disputes, is the basis for the trade policy of the EPP-ED Group.

In addition to improved market access for industrial goods and comprehensive reductions in customs tariffs as a precondition for further economic growth, the WTO members should open formal negotiations on the so-called ‘Singapore issues’ - investment protection, competition rules, facilitation of trade and transparency in government procurement. Minimum standards and transparency are essential if the negotiating round is actually to produce the economic result expected from it. Steadily increasing market access should be brought about in the field of services and other areas, such as telecommunications, financial services, transport and environmental services, should also be included in the body of WTO rules. However, the EPP-ED Group is not in favour of negotiations in the sensitive areas of healthcare, education and the audiovisual sector in order thus to take account of the particular features of the services in this field.

In the field of trade in agricultural products, the Group regards the decisions on the restructuring of agricultural aid adopted in 2003 as having created the necessary preconditions for success in the negotiations. The switch from aid based on production to aid based on cultivated area takes account of the long-standing demands of other WTO members. In the field of export subsidies too there is the prospect of a considerable reduction in the distortion of the world market resulting from internal EU policies.

Greater integration of the developing countries into the world economy, and thus sustained economic growth for them, can be achieved only as part of an open, multilateral trading system. Therefore, the EPP-ED Group also calls upon the other WTO members to follow the example of the EU and to permit customs and quota-free access to their markets for products from the least developed countries.

The EPP-ED Group is among the joint initiators of the WTO Parliamentary Assembly. The spirit and purpose of this initiative, which was launched in Seattle back in 1999, is to create, through increased parliamentary monitoring of the WTO, greater transparency and openness in the WTO and to make it possible to include in the negotiating process, in an appropriate manner, the various fears, concerns and legitimate interests which exist in relation to globalisation. Both in Doha in 2001 and again in Cancún in 2003 the European Parliament, together with the Inter-Parliamentary Union, organised a parliamentary assembly which followed the negotiations critically and put forward proposals to break deadlock.


III. The aims of the EPP-ED Group for the next parliamentary term

The EPP-ED Group will consider the EU’s strategic direction in trade policy in order to answer fundamental questions following the failure of Cancún, namely: to what extent is the existing WTO system in need of reform, in particular as regards the rules governing the conduct of negotiations; what scope is there within the WTO for the conclusion of plurilateral supplementary agreements, that is to say agreements on trade liberalisation in additional areas to which not all WTO members must be party but which will remain under the umbrella of the WTO; how must EU trade and development policy be guided to establish the preconditions necessary for the successful conclusion of the Doha development round; and, finally, how can the role of parliaments in trade policy be further strengthened in order to give a voice and weight to citizens’ legitimate concerns.

The EPP-ED Group is firmly of the opinion that the previous multilateral approach to trade policy should under no circumstances be abandoned in favour of bilateral agreements. Only multilateral agreements with a legal implementation mechanism can safeguard the opportunities of all those concerned and thus ensure broad acceptance and a high level of effectiveness of the WTO.