International Trade Reporter
Volume 16 Number 49 Thursday, December 16, 1999 Page 2027 ISSN 1523-2816 World News
WTO
Reconvening WTO Ministerial Meeting Will Take Some Time, EU Official Says
A senior European Union official said Dec. 9 that the ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization that was suspended the week of Nov. 30 will be reconvened only after some time has lapsed to allow countries to regroup.
John B. Richardson, acting head of the European Commission delegation in Washington, D.C., said that little progress was likely to be made, in any event, until after the U.S. presidential elections next year.
He said that the EU will begin consultations shortly to assess the next steps--within the EU, with the United States, and with WTO Director-General Mike Moore.
"I think we're going to take this very carefully," Richardson said.
He said it will take time to rebuild the consensus for trade liberalization "within carefully defined constraints to take account of the concerns expressed in Seattle on the social and environmental side."
"We must rebuild that consensus," he said, "and it will take time."
Richardson made his remarks at a conference organized by the American Enterprise Institute.
WTO Director-General Moore was reported to have said the week of Dec. 6 that he wants to reconvene the ministerial meeting "as soon as possible."
But Richardson, along with other speakers at the AEI conference, said that it was likely to be "some time" before the meeting was resumed.
He said that there were several reasons for the breakdown of the Seattle talks, including the "medieval" decision-making procedures of the WTO; the complexity of the agenda; the sheer size of the undertaking; the gaps between the United States and the EU, which proved unbridgeable; and the upcoming presidential elections (16 ITR 1990, 12/9/99).
Price Tag for Sanctions Remark
"We believe that the president's statements [in Seattle] on core labor rights increased the price which both the EU and the United States would have had to pay to [least-developed countries] to launch a round," Richardson said. "Neither the U.S. nor the European Union was able to pay [that price]."
Clinton said in a Seattle newspaper interview Nov. 30 that he wants to create a WTO working group on labor, which would develop labor standards and include them in all trade agreements. "Ultimately I would favor a system in which sanctions would come for violating any provision of a trade agreement,'' Clinton said.
Daniel K. Tarullo, a former assistant to the president for international economic policy in the Clinton administration, said that a "pause" in the talks will be necessary to enable the United States and the EU to repair the "fissure" that currently divides them over trade.
"Every other trade round has begun because the U.S. and Europe had a basic agreement as to how that round should proceed," he said. "In this instance, there was no such agreement."
Tarullo, who is now a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, said that the Seattle talks also failed because of two other fissures, i.e., between developing and developed countries and between traditional trade concerns and social values such as labor rights, environmental protection, and food safety.
He said that business was also not fully behind the WTO process.
"Business' agenda is China," he said, "not the WTO."
By Gary G. Yerkey
Copyright c 1999 by The Bureau of National Affairs, Inc., Washington D.C.:
