Commissioner Fischler's Speech on Re-launching WTO talks at the EP

Summary: January 13, 2004: Speech by Dr. Franz FISCHLER, Member of the European Commission responsible for Agriculture, Rural Development and Fisheries. Re-launching WTO talks. European Parliament (Strasbourg)

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It was most certainly a major disappointment that WTO members were not able to re-launch the DDA negotiations in Geneva in December. The impression that I am left with regarding the circumstances surrounding the lead up to the 15 December meeting in Geneva, is that the process was at fault. WTO members were not negotiating amongst themselves but rather through the chair of the WTO General Council.

This is was not conducive to reaching agreement. I am all the more convinced of this as shortly afterwards I met with a number of Ministers in the margins of the FAO Conference in Rome, and found that they had a full understanding of the issues. I was left with a feeling that with more discussion between members agreement may have been achieved.

On the substance, it must be said that we will not accept a framework for negotiating modalities at any cost. We continue to have two main preconditions for agreement:

The first is that trade distorting support, i.e. amber box is disciplined more than blue box support, which is less trade distorting.
The second is that in addressing export competition, all forms of export subsidisation must be genuinely tacked.

We ourselves opened the debate on export subsidisation, by proposing to phase out all forms of export subsidies on a list of sensitive products for developing countries. We still await a response to this offer.

At the same time we note an absence of commitment from others regarding other forms of export subsidisation.

As examples of the sort of measures that need to be tackled, I can mention state trading enterprises or STEs, where I understand that the Canadian Government will be underwriting the recent losses of the Canadian Weak Board, differential export taxes applied by Argentina on soy beans, which have resulted in an indirect subsidy to the construction of a massive crashing facility in Argentina, and food aid dumping, on which the US continues to be silent.

We have made it clear from the start that we will only move on export competition if all measures are fully addressed in a parallel fashion.

Ref: SP04-204EN
EU source: European Commission
UN forum:
Date: 13/1/2004

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