Agriculture and trade failures

When the World Trade Organization (WTO) talks broke down last July for the EU it meant the offer of cuts in agricultural tariffs was off the table. But this was a paltry recompense when the chance to get a worldwide deal on market access for European produce was put on indefinite hold.

The Commission was given a mandate by member states which many believe was simply too difficult to manoeuvre within, especially on agriculture. "The member states, especially from the south and led by France, are certainly to blame, they didn’t help [Trade Commissioner Peter] Mandelson," says Louis Belanger, Oxfam spokesman in Brussels.

Although the Commission maintains that its offers on agriculture were far-reaching, it was not determined enough to induce the US into a deal and lower its agriculture subsidies and open up its markets.

Non-governmental organisations say that the Commission did not do enough to ensure the talks were focused on development. "They could not accept that what was put on the table did not go far enough. The intransigence of Brussels was part of the reason the talks failed," says Belanger. But David Kernohan, senior research fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies, says the Commission’s ideas to give poorer countries free market access and the financial help to boost their economies in the aid-for-trade packages was innovative and an important part of the Doha development round.

The Commission has begun to negotiate trade deals bilaterally but this has been criticised as possibly undermining the future of a WTO deal and not being in the interests of most European businesses, which operate globally. With the US mid-term elections and the Brazilian presidential elections out of the way the scene is now set for yet another attempt to reach a multilateral agreement.

When the World Trade Organization (WTO) talks broke down last July for the EU it meant the offer of cuts in agricultural tariffs was off the table. But this was a paltry recompense when the chance to get a worldwide deal on market access for European produce was put on indefinite hold.