EU to make trade push at Davos meeting

The EU will use a meeting next week at the World Economic Forum to try to set a date for a formal gathering of trade ministers to discuss a multilateral world trade deal.

The meeting of 20 trade ministers in Davos, Switzerland, next Saturday (28 January) to discuss reviving the World Trade Organization (WTO) talks that collapsed last July would allow EU officials to test the waters to see if there was scope formally to kick-start negotiations, said a spokesman for Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson.

"We will be pushing for such a meeting as soon as possible but not if we don’t think it’s going to yield results. There’s no point meeting until participants are ready to contribute in a positive way," said the spokesman.

"We are cranking up the machine. There’s a window of opportunity, a narrow one, and we have to exploit all opportunities."

Mandelson was upbeat this week on the chances of reviving talks. "After a series of meetings of senior officials it is clear that the gap between us on agriculture is no longer such to dismiss hope of a successful outcome. We are not that far apart to give up on the process," said the spokesman.

EU politicians are under pressure from EU business leaders to push for a successful round of WTO talks before July when US President George W. Bush loses his enhanced authority to negotiate trade deals.

But groups pushing for a greater emphasis on the development aspect of the Doha round do not expect the talks to deliver what poorer states want. "Rumours of positive noises do not come with any guarantees of a resumption of talks in the right direction," said Amy Barry, Oxfam International’s trade spokeswoman. She said that while a focus was being put on EU-US talks on cutting agricultural tariffs, developing countries were being pressured to open their vulnerable markets to competition. The US in particular was pushing countries such as India, Indonesia and the Philippines to bring down tariffs on its corn and rice, added Barry.

The EU will use a meeting next week at the World Economic Forum to try to set a date for a formal gathering of trade ministers to discuss a multilateral world trade deal.