The continuing stalemate in the Doha Round of multilateral trade talks under the auspices of the World Trade Organization (WTO) is seen by parliamentarians as a grave political risk and a threat to development prospects for masses of people in both rich and poor countries. Exercising their constitutional right to oversee government action, parliamentarians should look over the shoulder of WTO negotiators and see for themselves what is holding back the Doha Round talks.
This was the message that parliamentarians, members of the Steering Committee of the Parliamentary Conference on the WTO, addressed to the world from IPU Headquarters in Geneva on 15 June 2007. The Conference is a de facto parliamentary dimension of the WTO. It was initiated by the IPU and the European Parliament five years ago.
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The Steering Committee was encouraged by the words of WTO Director-General, Pascal Lamy, who told it that contacts, discussions and negotiations had picked up over the past two months and that, in his view, an interim agreement paving the way for an eventual conclusion of the Round was still within reach. Three elements are crucial for the achievement of the interim agreement: the amount of the reductions in trade-distorting agricultural subsidies, in agricultural tariffs and in industrial tariffs.
In the Director-General's words, the negotiating positions have recently moved closer to each other but, although the landing site is now visible, it can only be reached through trade-offs. On the matter of subsidies, an additional effort is needed from the Americans. The Europeans and Japanese should be able to follow without any major difficulty. Regarding the opening up of agricultural markets, the Europeans and the Japanese would have to improve their offer, while the emerging countries would have to accept that the protection to which they are entitled does not mean that no further opening would take place. As far as industrial products are concerned, the emerging countries would have to improve the offers they have tabled. All in all, even though further concessions would have to be made by all sides, an additional political effort should be able to cover the remaining ground.
At the end of a two-day session held in Geneva, the Steering Committee urged all WTO members - and in particular the United States, the European Union and the G20 developing countries - to take the necessary steps to identify the proportions of possible concessions during the coming weeks. This call is all the more relevant now that the G4 consultations in Potsdam in late June have ended in yet another failure. Both the risks and the stakes may be higher than ever, but the end of trade multilateralism is not an option, say parliamentarians.
