Agence France Presse | July 30, 2003
The United States and European Union will seek to draft a joint proposal on farm trade as part of the effort to revamp global trading rules, participants in talks here said Wednesday.
The two sides will draft a plan to be presented August 11 in Geneva at the World Trade Organization, where officials from the 146 members will meet in preparation for a crucial September summit in Cancun, Mexico.
EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy said he believed a compromise could be crafted in time for the Cancun meeting.
"We will try and work on three topics of agriculture, to do that in time for the 11th of August," Lamy told reporters, referring to the question of domestic subsidies, export subsidies and barriers to farm imports.
"If there is success, there is enough time to be ready" for the Cancun session.
At the conclusion of a session of some 25 key trade officials, Canadian International Trade Minister Pierre Pettigrew said he believed the US-EU joint effort could offer a compromise solution in the stalled WTO farm talks.
Pettigrew said Washington "offered a suggestion that would blend the different ideas for reducing farm subsidies."
Pettigrew added, "There is still much work to do and not much time to do it. With only one month left before Cancun, we must now urgently focus our energies on resolving problems in key areas, if we are to hold true to the goals we set when we launched the Doha Development Agenda."
The three days of informal talks here were held ahead of a September WTO summit in Cancun, where progress of the latest round of free trade talks, known as the Doha Round, will be measured.
So far, the Doha Round of talks, launched in the Qatari capital in 2001, has advanced little, with none of the deadlines fixed for negotiation modalities respected.
Talks on farm subsidies have been among the thorniest in the latest round of talks, with considerable pressure on the European Union and other wealthy nations to curb subsidies and improve market access for products from developing nations.
A European Union official said earlier this week that the EU proposed to cut its domestic subsidies by 60 percent as part of its recently reformed Common Agricultural Policy. The EU was looking for similar moves by the United States to respond to that proposal.
But farm leaders from 30 countries pressed the trade ministers here to ensure any trade accords preserve some protections to sustain and improve local farmers' livelihoods.Agence France Presse:
