No. 61/06
July 25, 2006

EU COMMITTED TO KEEP DOHA WTO FLAG FLYING

Despite this week's indefinite suspension of the World Trade Organisation's Doha Round, the European Union remains committed to making the trade talks succeed and will push to help developing countries regardless of the delay, EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson said on Tuesday. "Doha will remain a central priority of European trade policy. We will work to bring it back to life and to success," he said and warned that "the costs of this breakdown are high – and will be even higher if it becomes permanent."

Focusing on next steps to take, Mandelson said: "In the short term, we should ensure that the more needy developing countries do not fall victim to the inability of the WTO membership as a whole to strike a deal. As a starting point, we should extract from the rubble of the negotiation a significant development package and frontload it, creating an early harvest for the most needy developing countries."

To achieve this goal, Mandelson presented a seven point action plan for salvaging or extending the development agenda:

• Push ahead with the Aid for Trade package because developing countries’ capacity constraints remain unchanged.

• Continue to put together a new agreement on trade facilitation, which is linked to Aid for Trade and will be a focus of our trade-related assistance in the years ahead.

• Put in place the new Integrated Framework for technical assistance to trade for the LDCs [Lesser Developed Countries] and get it up and running.

• Fully implement and possibly improve the Hong Kong agreement on duty-free/quota-free market access outside of the Round.

• Pursue specific proposals on Special and Differential Treatment on a fast-track and stand-alone basis, adapting existing WTO agreements in this way.

• Continue to work on making origin rules more development-friendly.

• Put in place improvements on the dispute settlement understanding to make it easier for developing countries to use.

Mandelson also called for thinking through the agenda of work for the WTO.

"How can we strengthen that organization both in its policies and in the way it operates? I do not advocate a program of urgent reform: that would risk side-tracking us. But we should reflect on the negotiating process we have been through to see how it can be improved if we are to kick start this Round again – which is what the EU wants to do."

For the full text of Commissioner Mandelson's remarks, please visit: http://www.eurunion.org/newsweb/HotTopics/Doha.htm .

For further information please visit: http://www.eurunion.org/ .