GENEVA, Switzerland (Reuters) – World Trade Organization chief Mike Moore has praised a European Union plan to drop tariffs on imports from the world’s poorest countries.
He called the plan “a concrete demonstration of EU goodwill” amid efforts to reach agreement in the 140-member WTO on launching a new round of liberalization talks.
He also said it was a signal of what the EU intends to do at a United Nations conference in Brussels in May on the problems of the world’s 48 least-developed countries, or LDCs.
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Moore said he hoped other countries will also move to improve market access within the framework of a new trade round. EU officials have said they think the United States should quickly follow suit.
Some countries, including Canada, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, Norway and the U.S., have taken steps in that direction, but have not gone as far as the EU plan.
Foreign ministers from the 15 EU countries agreed on the new LDC plan Feb. 26, despite resistance by France. Only arms are excluded from the plan.
All other commodities will be affected immediately, except for sugar, rice and bananas, which will be phased in between 2006 and 2009 with special quotas before then.
European farmers, badly hit by crises over bovine spongiform encephalopathy and now foot-and-mouth disease, resisted EU trade commissioner Pascal Lamy’s original proposals, which had provided for the three commodities to be tariff-free from the start.
Developing country delegates to a UN conference on cocoa in Geneva, which heard a fierce attack on industrialized powers for blocking imports of LDC goods, also welcomed the decision.
“From what I have seen, it is a very good development,” said an African negotiator.
Moore and Lamy are pushing for formal agreement on a launch early next year of a new full trade round.
Moore said he hopes that developing countries, which are resisting these efforts, will swing around to support the idea of a new full trade round.
