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Contents
> Director-General’s letter to journalists
> The Doha Development Agenda
> Agriculture
> Cotton
> Services
> Market access, non-agricultural products
> Intellectual property (TRIPS)
> Trade facilitation
> Rules: ad, scm including fisheries subsidies
> Rules: regional agreements
> Dispute settlement
> Trade and environment
> Small economies
> Trade, debt and finance
> Trade and technology transfer
> Technical cooperation
> Least-developed countries
> Special and differential treatment
> Implementation issues
> Electronic commerce
> Members and accessions
> Members
> Bananas
> Statistics, Textiles and Clothing
> Statistics, Facts and Figures
> Jargon buster, Country groupings
> Jargon buster, An informal guide to ‘WTOspeak’
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The proposal became a Cancún
Ministerial Conference document and an agenda item of the conference,
seeking decision by the ministers. Members’ views differed
as to whether this should be handled as a specific question or whether it should
come under the three pillars of the agriculture negotiations (market access,
domestic support and export subsidies). They also differed over the question
of compensation, how it should be paid, for example whether it should be development
assistance, and who should handle it — the WTO does not have development funding
except for training officials in WTO affairs.
Recovering from the deadlock in
Cancún, the August 2004 General Council decision says members consider the
cotton initiative to be important in both of its two main points: the trade
issues covered
by the framework for agriculture modalities and the development issues. The
two are linked.
Development
Referring to the WTO Secretariat’s
23-24 March 2004 workshop on cotton in Cotonou, Benin, and other activities,
the main part of
the text
instructs the Secretariat and the director-general to continue to work with
the development community and international organizations (World Bank, IMF,
FAO,
International Trade Centre), and to report regularly to the General Council.
Members themselves, particularly developed countries, “should” engage in
similar work.
Trade
The “framework” instructs the agriculture
negotiations to ensure that the cotton issue is given “appropriate” priority,
and is independent of other sectoral initiatives. It says that both the
overall approach of
the framework
and the cotton initiative itself are the basis for ensuring that the cotton
issue is handled ambitiously, quickly and specifically within the agriculture
negotiations.
The Cotton Sub-Committee
It was set up under
the August 2004 framework at the 19 November 2004 meeting of the agriculture
negotiations.
Its
purpose
is to
focus on cotton as a specific issue in the agriculture talks. (The cotton
proposal, which also includes development issues, is discussed in the General
Council
as
well.) It normally meets close to the time of the “agriculture weeks” of
negotiations.
The latest new or modified proposals were tabled
in November 2005: from the
four African proponents (Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mali) and from
the EU. They
include proposed actions for ministers to take at the Hong Kong Ministerial
Conference.
The four African proponents call for export subsidies
on cotton to be eliminated
totally by the end of this year; 80% of trade distorting domestic support
to be scrapped by the end of 2006 and the remaining by 1 January 2009;
disciplines to ensure only authorized domestic supports remain; substantial
improvements
in market access, with duty-free and quota-free access for cotton and
cotton products from least-developed countries; an emergency fund to
help deal
with depressed international prices; and technical and financial assistance
for
the cotton sector in Africa.
The EU proposes ministers agree to larger
or faster
commitments for cotton than in agriculture as a whole in all three pillars.
In
addition, the EU says it is willing to eliminate all duties, quotas and
other quantitative restrictions on imports from all countries, the most
trade-distorting
domestic supports (AMS), and all export subsidies, from “day one” (the
first day that the final agreement is implemented), and to apply disciplines
on
Blue Box subsidies from “day one”. |
Other
material:
> Agriculture gateway
> Agriculture
negotiations
> Negotiations
backgrounder
> Doha declaration
> Doha declaration
explained
> More
on: The Cotton Sub-Committee |
