Mandelson’s rescue-plan attacked

Non-governmental organisations have belittled the European Commission's plan to salvage development aspects from the wreckage of the suspended World Trade Organization (WTO) talks.

Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson's seven-point plan involves pursuing aid-for-trade and an agreement reached last year on duty-free, quota-free access for poor countries.

But ActionAid International said there were already a number of poor countries granted access to the markets of rich countries. But new countries which come on board will not be allowed to export their most important products. In particular the US is denying duty-free, quota-free access to Bangladesh, Cambodia, the Maldives and Nepal for textile products and Japan is preventing poorer countries exporting rice and some fish products, said Mariano Iossa, food and trade policy adviser for ActionAid International in Brussels.

The EU had made previous deals to phase in access for poorer countries for bananas but sugar remains unresolved, he added.

On aid-for-trade there is not much additional money being provided. "A lot of money is existing commitments or involves double accounting," said Iossa.

"Mandelson wants to recover the development box from the talks but there isn't really much in it," he added.

Other groups were stressing the need for continued attempts at a multilateral global trade deal because in bilateral deals developing countries would always be unequal partners. "They need the multilateral deal to defend their interests," said Louis Belanger, spokesman for Oxfam in Brussels. "They need what the US and EU failed to do on agriculture and to solve the problem of dumping."

He predicted developing countries would now take cases against richer countries to the WTO to prevent dumping. "Brazil has already taken two cases and won. We're looking at the EU and US facing cases taken by countries such as Uruguay, Egypt and Chile," said Belanger.

Mandelson this week emphasised the generosity of offers Europe had made prior to the collapse of the talks in Geneva on Monday. He said that offering an average cut of 50% to its farm import tariffs - from an initial offer of 39% - was "hardly putting nothing on the table".

He criticised the US for not offering more cuts to its subsidies and greater market access. "The US I regret to say showed no flexibility at all in the end," he said.

But the US hit back saying that the EU had been "unable to endorse the US proposal given substantial opposition from France and a few other member states with strong farm interests".

Hugo Paemen, the Commission negotiator in previous WTO talks, the Uruguay round, said that the talks lacked leadership and pressure from business interests. "I'm sure the personalities played a role. Nobody really felt committed and there was no constituency for this round," he said.

Non-governmental organisations have belittled the European Commission's plan to salvage development aspects from the wreckage of the suspended World Trade Organization (WTO) talks.