Negotiations toward a new deal on world agricultural trade and support rules have bogged down, threatening broader World Trade Organization talks that are supposed to end by Dec. 31, 2004, says federal trade minister Pierre Pettigrew.
On June 22, as a WTO ministerial meeting in Egypt wrapped up, Pettigrew also hinted that the timetable set for completing the WTO negotiation may have been too ambitious.
All WTO ministers are to gather in Cancun, Mexico, in September to assess progress since the round was launched in Doha, Qatar, in November 2001 and to set political goals for the last two years of the talks.
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“It is clear that more work needs to be done before we can move forward on agriculture,” Pettigrew said in a telephone news conference from Egypt. “As we get closer to Cancun, my view is that the right deal is better than a quick deal. The most important thing to achieve at Cancun in the agriculture negotiations is to keep the level of ambition for reforms at a very high level.”
Originally, the Cancun meeting was supposed to be the forum where ministers would endorse the principles and broad outlines of an agricultural deal that would then allow progress in negotiations in other areas such as goods, services and intellectual property.
Instead, it appears the major test of Cancun will be whether ministers can keep the talks from collapsing.
The central sticking point, said Pettigrew, is the inability of the European Union to reform its agricultural policies that attach high subsidies to farm production.
EU agriculture commissioner Franz Fischler has proposed to move the subsidy supports away from output, which encourages overproduction, and toward general rural support, deemed to be less production distorting.
Talks about EU farm support reform are supposed to start again this week but so far, the member states remain deadlocked. France in particular wants to maintain a higher level of direct support for farmers.
The EU was included at the mini-WTO summit in Egypt.
“On agriculture we had a long discussion but made little progress,” Pettigrew sai. “Negotiations are essentially stalled while we wait for the Europeans to complete their internal reforms and to see whether that will allow them to bring some flexibility to the negotiating table.”
He said there is general agreement that progress is possible on other WTO negotiating topics, including market access.
“It appears that we had a good beginning so long as we make enough progress in agriculture. Of course, it is always related to that.”
The ministers will gather in Montreal at the end of July for one last attempt to make progress on agriculture before the Cancun meeting.
Meanwhile, a delegation of Canadian farm leaders says Canada is not being aggressive enough in selling its WTO position.
Leaders of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture were in Geneva last week to meet WTO officials, including agriculture negotiations committee chair Stuart Harbinson.
CFA president Bob Friesen told Harbinson CFA supports the Canadian positions that rules governing allowable domestic support be tightened, that use of export subsidies, food aid and credit be subject to more discipline with eventual elimination of export subsidies and that market access be improved while allowing “flexibility” in how it is done.
That is a Canadian code word for allowing high protective tariffs around import-sensitive sectors like dairy and poultry while increasing market access through a low or no-tariff minimum access sleeve at the bottom of the protective wall.
Friesen said in a statement issued in Geneva that the Canadian proposal could attract support from other countries if it was better understood.
“Following the meetings, CFA feels it is clear that the Canadian government needs to step up efforts to communicate Canada’s trade position to other WTO member nations,” he said. While there is interest, there needs to be “improved clarity.”
Other Canadian farm interests, represented by the Canadian Agri-Food Trading Alliance, oppose any Canadian effort to defend high protective tariffs.
