WTO Ministerial Section • Volume 9 • Number 30 • 14th September 2005

In First TNC Address, Lamy Announces “New Phase” in Talks

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In his first address to the WTO Trade Negotiations Committee (TNC) on 14 September, new Director-General Pascal Lamy called on Members to focus all of their efforts towards reaching an ambitious and coherent agreement at the organisation’s Hong Kong Ministerial Conference in December. That agreement, he said, should take Members two-thirds of the way towards finishing the Doha Round by the end of 2006. He warned that the Doha Round could only succeed if the "development dimension is at the centre of the negotiations."

The former EU Trade Commissioner dedicated much of his statement to process-related steps that he would take to try to push the negotiations forward. Proclaiming a "new phase" in the negotiations, he exhorted delegations to be "brief, pragmatic, practical, and action-oriented" instead of wasting time on long and repetitive declarations. He said that the WTO was entering into a period of "permanent negotiations," which he likened to a football team’s "training camp" before a crucial match.

Outlines substantive hurdles that must be overcome

Instead of describing the overall state of the negotiations, Lamy chose to outline strategic issues in the talks that he believed must be solved "for us to get out of the vicious circle and into the virtuous one." These included agreeing by Hong Kong on an end date for agricultural export subsidies, a "clear understanding" on how to cut and limit domestic farm support, and a formula for cutting tariffs on farm products that incorporates flexibilities for certain goods. With regard to non-agricultural market access (NAMA), he said that Members would have to "find the right balance between the [tariff reduction] formula and the flexibilities."

"From now until Hong Kong," Lamy went on, "Members should develop different approaches in services, leading to an increased number and to an enhanced quality of commitments." He also urged Members to try to arrive at draft negotiated texts on anti-dumping, subsidies and countervailing measures, and fisheries subsidies in the Negotiating Group on Rules.

The WTO chief was emphatic about the centrality of development concerns to every area of the ongoing negotiations. "The challenge is to maximise the development value of every sector and of the round as a whole," he said. Notably, he expressed the conviction that an "aid for trade" facility could "help us translate the development package of the round into reality."

Trade sources report that Lamy also said that Members would have to agree on a public health amendment to the WTO Agreement on Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) by Hong Kong.

Lamy stresses efficiency, transparency; urges constant evaluation of progress

As WTO Director-General, Lamy is Chair of the TNC. He outlined some changes in how the body would function under his guidance. Emphasising that the purpose of the TNC was to assess progress in the different negotiating areas, he said that he would not fix a date for the next TNC meeting, as has been customary. Instead, he would wait to see what was happening in the different negotiating groups before scheduling the next TNC session.

Both in his TNC speech and the press conference that followed, Lamy stressed that Geneva must be the centre of WTO activity between now and Hong Kong. He said that other initiatives to push the negotiations forward were welcome, but that they must be done in a way that supports the Geneva-based processes.

Lamy said he would attach a great deal of importance to transparency in his functions as Director-General. He said that he would make use of formal and informal TNC meetings at the head-of-delegation level to keep all Member delegations involved and informed of progress in his informal consultations.

Reminding Members that precisely three months separated their meeting from the 13 December start of the ministerial summit, Lamy asked them to constantly evaluate progress — or the lack thereof — in the negotiating groups, so as to keep things on track. He did identify two specific junctures for evaluation before December: mid-October, for evaluating progress made up to that point and coming to a clearer understanding of what it is that Members hope to achieve in Hong Kong; and mid-November as a date by which Members would need to see specific and substantive results from each negotiating group. Ideally, a consolidated draft ministerial text would emerge by the latter time, which would give delegations a month to hash out differences before the Ministerial Conference, thus improving their chances of reaching a deal.

Following the meeting, Lamy appealed to the US and the EU to make concessions in the agriculture talks, saying that they could break the deadlock in the negotiations by doing so. "They have margins of manoeuvre which they have to use tactically to the maximum of their capacities," he added. "The question is: when do they show their hand?"

Pascal Lamy’s full statement is available online at http://www.wto.org/english/news_e/news05_e/tnc_stat_lamy_14sep05_e.htm.

ICTSD reporting; "WTO chief urges US, EU to break deadlock in farm talks," XINHUA, 14 September 2005.