AFX.COM | December 4, 2001
BEIJING - EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy said last month's meeting of WTO ministers in Doha has made an "excellent start" on turning the WTO into a forum focused not only on trade liberalisation, but also on balancing liberalisation with regulation, and on development.
The outcome of the talks in Doha was "very satisfactory", both from the point of view of the EU and of developing countries, Lamy told a meeting of the EU Chambers of Commerce in Beijing.
"Perhaps no one went home feeling they had won on each point, but no one felt they had comprehensively lost, either. That was the real secret of (Doha's) success," he said.
"The Doha Development Agenda is really path-breaking negotiations," he said.
It implied the new round of talks would not just be another round, with arguments over tariffs on goods.
"This will be a global negotiation: it will take the WTO into a new era, one which allows the organisation to play a fuller role in the pursuit of economic growth, employment, and poverty reduction, and the promotion of sustainable development.
"In other words, the WTO becomes not just a forum focused simply on trade liberalisation. ... The WTO can and must also become an organisation which focuses equally on rule-making, on balancing liberalisation with regulation, and on development."
Lamy said the most significant single outcome of Doha was that the developed world recognised, and agreed to tackle the problems ot developing countries in implementing the outcomes of previous trade negotiations.
He said the EU had fought hard to ensure the new round contained negotiations to lead to the clarification of the status of multilateral environmental agreements in relation to the WTO.
"It should be welcomed that WTO members have decided to address this through negotiations instead of simply pushing this issue aside to evolve simply via the decisions of WTO dispute settlement bodies."
But he said he was disappointed over the outcome on core labour standards, where the Doha declaration did not accept the linkages the EU sees between the International Labour Organisation and the WTO.
Copyright 2001 AFP-Extel News LimitedAFX.COM:
