doha – cancun round

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DOHACANCUN ROUND

Submitted By:

Ajaybir Singh


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INTRODUCTION

In a 1994 general meeting held in Marrakech, Uruguay, the GeneralAgreement of Tariffs and Trade (GATT) decided to become theWorld Trade Organization (WTO). The new organization came intobeing in January 1995.

The WTO is comprised of a multilateral trading system, developed

through a series of trade negotiations, known as rounds, heldunder the GATT.

The last round of the GATT, known as the 1986-94 Uruguay Round,led to the creation of the WTO.


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THE FOURTH WTO MINISTERIALCONFERENCE, DOHA, 2001

The fourth WTO Ministerial Conference was held in Doha, Qatar in2001.

There, the 146 WTO members agreed to begin a new campaign forliberalized trade rules, aiming to commit to a new round of tariff

cuts and removal of trade barriers that should, in theory, increasetrade and prosperity for everyone.

The Doha Round declaration established a series of negotiatingobjectives and mandated that the Doha Development agenda mustbe completed by January 1, 2005.

The agenda items included agricultural subsidies, services, industrialtariffs, implementation, environment and Trade Related IntellectualProperty Rights (TRIPs)


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The Doha Round was launched with the aim ofcompleting negotiations by December 2004. One of theimportant items of the agenda is the reduction andelimination of the huge agricultural subsidies in

European Union (EU) and United States (US). The EU commission rejected total elimination of all

agricultural subsidies. Negotiators failed even to agreeon the terms for liberalizing agricultural markets


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THE FIFTH WTO MINISTERIALCONFERENCE, CANCUN, 2003

The fifth WTO Ministerial Conference was held in Cancun, Mexico inSeptember 2003.. As soon as the text of the agenda was released,delegates from the developing countries were dismayed to see thatmany of their pre-submitted items were left out.

One of the important items left out was the issue of reduction andelimination of the huge EU-US farm subsidies. As a result, 21 of thedeveloping countries formed, led by India and Brazil, formed the, G-21 Group initiated to insist on discussions of the EU-US farmsubsidies.

The EU delegates continued to insist that the four Singapore issuesmust be dealt with first before any discussions on the developmentissues that are already on the top of the agenda items


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A G-21 proposal to reduce the EU-US farm subsidies and marketbarriers largely drove the agenda at Cancun. India in particularargued that its 600 million poor farmers could not survive if exposedto subsidies-backed competition from Americas corporate farmer.

The WTO Cancun conference came to a dramatic end without anyagreement, leaving the negotiations in a deadlock.


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Collapse of negotiations

The Cancn ministerial collapsed for several reasons.

First, differences over the Singapore issues seemedincapable of resolution. The EU had retreated on someof its demands, but several developing countries refused

any consideration of these issues at all. Second, it was questioned whether some countries had

come to Cancn with a serious intention to negotiate. Inthe view of some observers, a few countries showed noflexibility in their positions and only repeated theirdemands rather than talk about trade-offs.


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Third, the wide difference between developing anddeveloped countries across virtually all topics was amajor obstacle. The U.S.-EU agricultural proposal andthat of the G20 developing nations, for example, showstrikingly different approaches to special and differential

treatment. Fourth, there was some criticism of procedure. Some

claimed the agenda was too complicated.

Also, Cancn ministerial chairman, Mexicos Foreign

Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez, was faulted for ending themeeting when he did, instead of trying to move the talksinto areas where some progress could have been made.


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Singapore Issues

The Singapore issues in the debate on the agenda ofthe Doha Development Agenda of the World TradeOrganization are investment, competition, transparencyin government procurement and trade facilitation. More

accurately the issue is what role the WTO should play ineach of these policy areas.

A number of developed countries, above all theEuropean Union, have argued that these issues shouldbe on the WTO agenda.

They are referred to as the Singapore issues because itwas at the WTO Ministerial Meeting in Singapore in1996, that agreement was reached to study the issues inWTO.


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After five years of discussions there was still noconsensus on the inclusion of these issues when theDoha Development Agenda (DDA) was launched inNovember 2001.

The decision on whether to include the issues in theDDA, was postponed until the Cancun WTO Ministerial inSeptember 2003.

It was also agreed that a decision on the modalities ofnegotiations on these issues would be taken by anexplicit consensus.

It was ostensibly differences over the inclusion of theSingapore issues in the DDA that resulted in the collapseof the WTO Ministerial meeting in Cancun.


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THANK YOU

doha – cancun round

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