By Lewis Crofts - 30th September 2003
As diplomats swap pleasantries at an EU-Australia summit in Rome on Thursday, officials behind the scenes have launched attacks on each other’s trade practices at the World Trade Organisation's Geneva headquarters.
First blood went to Canberra at the WTO's 'dispute settlement' meeting, as the Australians lodged their second request for an investigation into the EU’s scheme to protect specialist food names like Champagne and Roquefort – so-called ‘geographical indications’ (GIs).
Australia’s demand coincided with an identical move made by the US to oppose Brussels’ attempts to set up a new-look list of protected food names where in return for the EU registering Idaho potatoes, for example, America would have to recognise the entirety of Europe's 600-strong catalogue of GIs.
Many consider this just thinly veiled protectionism and a US official branded it "inconsistent" with WTO rules.
The requests resulted in the establishment of an investigatory panel which will have six months to publish its findings.
Not to be out-boxed, Brussels punched back at Canberra asking the WTO to look into stringent quarantine measures it claims “block unjustifiably the import of a number of agricultural products” into Australia.
In an interview with EUpolitix.com, Australian trade minister Mark Vaile refuted these claims and stressed, “we are quite happy to have [the quarantine measures] tested in the Geneva process and we feel confident we’ll be proven to be correctly applying the sanitary and proto-sanitary protocols of the WTO”.
Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy has incited Canberra, which traditionally bangs the free-trade drum, "to live up to its own rhetoric on open trade" and make its market more accessible to foreign imports.
This is, however, the first such request made by the EU for an investigatory panel and Canberra therefore challenged it and has gained itself a month’s breathing space.
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