Trading giants to swap ideas before WTO

Date: 19/09/1996

TRADE Commissioner Sir Leon Brittan is in for a hard month.

In the wake of a two-day meeting with EU trade ministers which ends today (19 September), he travels to Seattle next week to meet their counterparts from the US, Canada and Japan for their biannual consultations.

Like most meetings of trade officials this autumn, the so-called 'quad' meeting will focus on preparing for the first ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in December.

But, as is also the case in most trade-centred conversations this year, attention will be diverted by the ongoing feud between Washington and its trading partners over its threatened sanctions against anyone profiting from Cuban property expropriated from Americans.

Canada has been hardest hit by the Helms-Burton legislation, and trade officials expect International Trade Minister Arthur Eggleton to complain loudly.

Brittan has taken up the cudgels on the Helms-Burton legislation with vigour, even though EU investments in Cuba are almost negligible.

On behalf of Union governments, the Commission is drafting a blocking statute which Europeans could use to check the impact of both Helms-Burton and the more recent D'Amato legislation designed to punish Europeans investing in the oil sectors in Iran and Libya.

“We want to keep the maximum pressure on the Americans to change Helms-Burton, to show them we will not flinch,” said a Brittan aide this week.

While threatening that EU governments could approve the blocking statute next month - perhaps when Union foreign ministers meet on 1 October - he admitted that the regulation would probably not take effect before the US elections in early November.

US Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky is unlikely to concede any ground to either Brittan or Eggleton in Seattle.

More important to European companies would be progress at next week's meeting on a number of ongoing debates in the WTO. Before they meet with 100 other colleagues in Singapore, the quad partners need to consolidate some of their own positions.

One key point on the agenda will be the goal of a world-wide agreement to liberalise telecommunications markets by next February. A previous attempt failed in April, and EU officials want to prepare the ground for a better result this time.

The four trade chiefs will also discuss whether the WTO should push for global deals in several other areas. “We want to hear our partners' views on investment, competition and labour standards,” said an EU official.

Agreement on those issues in Seattle would create a formidable force when the four trade giants reach Singapore.