Members of the World Trade Organization that met in Paris last week are considering an additional mini-ministerial in July hosted by Canada that would help them prepare the mid-term review of the Doha negotiations in Cancun, according to government officials. The July ministerial could likely focus on the issues that would not be addressed in a June mini-ministerial in Egypt, which is expected to cover industrial market access, special and differential treatment and agricultural market access, they said.
Some sources held out the hope that the July meeting, which could take place in Montreal, could already discuss a framework for decisions in the Cancun meeting scheduled for September.
In preparation for Cancun, the U.S. and European Union are trying to intensify their cooperation, most recently through a May 8 conversation between Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Peter Allgeier and Director General for Trade Peter Carl, they said. This follows a meeting between U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick and EU Commissioner Pascal Lamy on May 1 in Normandy that covered both multilateral and bilateral issues.
In the informal Paris meetings, Zoellick and Lamy laid out six issues on which they want to focus in preparation for Cancun, thereby taking the focus away from agriculture. They both made that point in the Paris meetings, according to informed sources. The list includes agricultural market access, but that was not discussed in detail, they said. It also includes non-agricultural market access, services, the so-called Singapore issues, development issues, including S&D, implementation and developing country access to cheaper generic drugs, and rules (Inside U.S. Trade, April 25, p. 1).
The idea behind the six-point approach is to ensure that progress can take place in other areas even if agriculture continues to lag, and to promote the idea that failure in agriculture would risk potential gains in other areas, sources said.
The degree of U.S. and EU cooperation varies on the different issues, but both sides seem to be committed to cooperate as much as possible to ensure Cancun can be seen as a success (Inside U.S. Trade, May 2, p. 1).
The U.S. and EU seem to have narrowed their differences on the controversial Singapore issues of competition and investment. Both sides agree that competition should be kept on the WTO agenda, and are discussing the idea of a peer review as a way of doing so. Patterned after the Trade Policy Review Mechanism, such a review would look at how WTO members handle competition in their laws and regulations and how that impacts their economies, but it would not examine how they have handled individual anti-trust cases, sources said.
On investment, the U.S. is ready to move forward provided the WTO would agree to a broad definition, and that future WTO rules would not prevent the U.S. from entering into more advanced investment agreements bilaterally, sources said. The two sides agree that they want to move forward on negotiating rules for transparency in government procurement and trade facilitation, the other two Singapore issues.
The two sides differ considerably on the issue of geographical indications, although in Paris, Zoellick signaled a willingness to have a serious discussion on the GI issues, officials said. That does not amount to a commitment that he is ready to make it part of the Doha negotiations beyond creating a registry of wine and spirits, but officials also pointed out that he did not highlight the fact he is ruling out negotiations on the other GI issues.
Zoellick signaled in Paris that GI issues could be handled by the Trade Negotiations Committee, the WTO director general or the Council on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, sources said.
The EU is raising a controversial demand for stronger protection of GI products in the so-called implementation agenda, which consists of demands, largely by developing countries, that existing trade agreements be implemented in a way to provide more benefits to them. The EU has signaled that it wants stronger protection for GIs akin to those now afforded to wines and spirits as the price of EU agricultural concessions, a notion the U.S. has opposed.
The U.S. also remains very cool to other implementation demands, including Brazil's call for the Agreement on Trade Related Investment Measures to allow more flexibility to developing countries, and India's demands that existing textile rules be interpreted with more flexibility.
Also, WTO members face a fundamental divide in implementation over whether these issues are formally part of the Doha negotiations or not, given the ambiguous wording in the documents that launched the Doha round, officials said.
On rules, the list includes the negotiations on antidumping and countervailing disciplines but also the review of the Dispute Settlement Understanding and the protection of geographical indications, sources said. These issues are on the six-point list not because a decision is required in Cancun, but because it provides a "balance" of interests.
On antidumping and countervailing duties, the U.S. tabled a new paper as further evidence of its affirmative agenda in the negotiations for this week's meeting of the negotiating group. Officials from two countries that are seeking to change international rules on trade remedies have characterized the U.S. stance in the negotiations as very positive in recent weeks.
On development issues, the Paris meetings did not advance the issue of giving developing countries more access to generic copies of patented drugs to fight health care problems under the TRIPS Agreement.
Many ministers expressed their hope that an agreement on TRIPS and health would be reached before Cancun or at the beginning of the ministerial at the latest. Officials said Zoellick did not comment in the meetings on whether he endorses this timeline, which was very controversial with the U.S. pharmaceutical industry when Allgeier endorsed it in early April. Following a meeting in late April with pharmaceutical company executives, Zoellick signaled in informal conversations with key players in the Doha negotiations that he faced new problems in trying to address this issue, according to informed sources.
Zoellick also said in the informal Paris meeting that he is committed to solving the TRIPs and health issue, but that he needs help from developing countries to address the lack of trust that has developed between the pharmaceutical companies and developing countries. This has been the U.S. message for weeks, but U.S. officials have not explained what that actually means and foreign officials did not ask for an explanation in Paris, one government participant said.
Both the U.S. and EU have endorsed TRIPs and health as an important issue, but there is a perception among some U.S. government officials that the EU has elevated it to too high a level by placing it on par with agriculture negotiations, informed sources said.
The U.S. has previously argued that it has already taken steps to address the problems identified by developing countries seeking better access to cheap drugs by announcing a moratorium on trade challenges under TRIPs. But developing countries have argued that is not enough to give them the legal certainty they need to be protected from court challenges. In addition, the terms of the U.S. moratorium differ from those announced by the EU and Switzerland, sources said.
Another unresolved development issue is the strengthening of special and differential treatment provisions in existing trade agreements. Last week's informal meeting of selected trade ministers confirmed a willingness to let General Council Chairman Perez Del Castillo continue his work on getting an agreement of how to make existing trade agreements more beneficial to developing countries. Castillo in late March came forward with a proposal for categorizing special and differential treatment demands into three boxes: one for those that are likely to be acceptable to developed countries, a second for issues to be referred to negotiating bodies for consideration, and a third for those that have little chance of being accepted (Inside U.S. Trade, March 28, p. 5).
At the time, he would only say that he thought the first category should include about 40 proposals, which would be 20 more than had been discussed as a possible deal late last year (Inside U.S. Trade, Dec. 20, 2002, p.1). Castillo was expected to float a paper to heads of delegations yesterday (May 8) that would specify which S& D demands would go into each category, Geneva sources said.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. NoNonsense English offers this material non-commercially for research and educational purposes. I believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C § 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, i.e. the media service or newspaper which first published the article online and which is indicated at the top of the article unless otherwise specified.