"What we now need is more leadership and courage. Parliamentarians have shown both, with their unwavering support for the WTO. You must now transmit this same spirit to your country's negotiators. I urge you to convey the message back home that, in view of the package that is currently on the WTO table, the Doha Round must see the light of day".
With this energetic appeal, the Director-General of the World Trade Organization, Mr. Pascal Lamy, concluded his speech before the nearly 450 parliamentary delegates from 87 countries who gathered in Geneva on 11 and 12 September 2008 for the annual session of the Parliamentary Conference on the WTO.
The Conference is a joint undertaking of the IPU and the European Parliament. In its six years of existence, it has proved its worth as an effective tool of parliamentary scrutiny of international trade policies, a forum where members of parliament learn from each other and engage in direct interaction with WTO officials and negotiators.
This year's session took place at a critical moment for the Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations. For the third summer in a row, attempts to reach a breakthrough in WTO talks ended in failure. Despite the repeated commitments to conclude the Round by the end of 2008, WTO meetings held in late July fell short of an accord, once again.
Participants pointed out that further delays in WTO negotiations would weaken the entire multilateral trading system and negatively affect the collective capacity of the international community to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. This situation would also jeopardize other major international negotiations, such as the one on climate change.
Indeed, the conclusion of the Doha Round is closely linked to issues of global food security and climate change - two themes that dominated the agenda of this year's session of the Parliamentary Conference on the WTO. Delegates concurred that the wave of rising food prices could find at least a partial answer in the conclusion of the Doha Round, allowing supply to adjust to demand with greater ease. Similarly, if the international community cannot muster the courage to open markets collectively through a trade round, it does not augur well for the success of the negotiations on a post-Kyoto regime.
Following two days of intensive deliberations, the session concluded by adopting an outcome document in which parliamentarians reiterated their commitment to play a greater role in promoting the fairness of trade liberalization. Responding to the WTO Director-General's appeal, parliamentarians undertook to urge their respective governments to close the trade deal before the end of the year so that the entire Doha Round could be concluded in 2009.
