By Peggy Corlin - 28th June 2006
World trade talks will end in failure if the US refuses to cut farm subsidies, EU agriculture commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel said on Thursday.
As WTO members meet in Geneva to resume talks on the so-called Doha round, the Danish commissioner made it clear that the EU could not be expected to be the only one making concessions.Speaking after a meeting with European agriculture ministers and EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson, who handles the negotiations on behalf of the EU, Fischer Boel called on the US to accept a “real drop” in their farm export subsidies.
The EU has been put under pressure by some member states – particularly by France, which is traditionally conservative on the agriculture issue – not to give too much away to trading partners.
The agriculture issue has proved to be a major stumbling block in the WTO talks on trade liberalisation, with the US and the EU both refusing to scrap financial assistance for farmers.
In December, however, the EU agreed to drop farm export subsidies by 2013.
But the US, where Congress is fiercely opposed to agriculture liberalisation, believes that Europe’s move does not go far enough to merit a reciprocal reduction in its own subsidies.
“The US has no intention of reducing its ambitions over access to agriculture markets,” Susan Schwab, US trade secretary of state, said recently.
Despite calls from WTO chief Pascal Lamy not to postpone a final decision on the Doha round, neither the EU nor the US is expecting a positive outlook this week, seeming to prefer no agreement to a bad one.
Mandelson, meanwhile, has invited WTO ministers to talk about the liberalisation of services, the other main pillar of the negotiations.
The commissioner wants each country to clarify its position on the dossier, with concessions from developing countries on liberalising services markets potentially offsetting developed countries’ concerns over agriculture.
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