‘Don’t be like emperors’, trade chiefs warned

Date: 02/10/03

EU TRADE negotiators risk making the same mistake as “Chinese emperors” who turned their backs on the rest of the world 500 years ago and suffered the consequences, a leading trade policy academic has warned.

Patrick Messerlin, a professor of economics at France's Institut d'Etudes Politiques, was responding to claims that the EU could live without a deal in the flagging Doha round, which hit the rocks at the failed World Trade Organization ministerial meeting at Cancún in September.

Mauro Petriccione, one of Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy's most senior officials, told a conference on globalization: “Above all we see it as a setback for development. It is developing countries that are paying the higher price.”

But Messerlin, a fierce critic of EU protectionist policies and the stance of the farm lobby in his native France, said this 'we can live without it' attitude would ultimately impoverish the European Union.

“We can live with the failure of Cancún? That is one of the big mistakes China made when it said it can live without the rest of the world and stopped expeditions to Africa and the Pacific. Then of course we know what has happened over the last five centuries.

“Even if you are at the peak of your powers and a front-runner, you need liberalization,” argued the professor.

He urged the EU to ditch hugely expensive agricultural protectionism that disproportionately benefits a small number of very big farms.

For instance, he said that his home outside Paris borders a farm that belongs to the de Rothschild banking family. “Mr de Rothschild gets €2 million in subsidies on 1 January without doing anything.

“Why do we want to compensate him?”

Patrick Messerlin, Professor of Economics at France's Institut de'Etudes Politiques, is urging the European Union to abandon agricultural protectionism that benefits a small number of very large farms. He also warned EU trade negotiators not to be complacent about the failure of the WTO Conference in Cancun in September 2003.