AGRICULTURE: NEGOTIATIONS

Chairperson’s texts 2008

Updated: 8 February 2008

On 8 February 2008, Ambassador Crawford Falconer, chairperson of the agriculture negotiations, circulated his latest revised draft “modalities” containing formulas for cutting tariffs and trade-distorting subsidies, and related provisions.

The draft is a revision of the previous version circulated in July and August 2007 and the chair’s 16 working documents circulated since then. It is the result of around 150 hours of negotiations from September to January, the most intensive phase in the Doha Round since it began in 2001 and since the agriculture negotiations began in March 2000.

(The 8 February 2008 release was coordinated with Ambassador Don Stephenson, chairperson of the non-agricultural market access negotiations, who also circulated his revised draft “modalities” paper.)

> Original mandate: Article 20
 > The Doha mandate
> The Doha mandate explained

 See also:
> Negotiations gateway
> 2004 agreed framework
> 2005 Hong Kong Ministerial Declaration
> More on the modalities phase

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Earlier texts    The previous, second draft of the modalities paper was circulated in July 2007, with corrections in August 2007. Negotiations led to 16 working documents, circulated in November 2007–January 2008.   Earlier, the first draft of the modalities paper was circulated on 22 June 2006. This reflected work on a series of “reference papers”, which Ambassador Falconer circulated in April–June 2006.   A previous draft was circulated by the then chairperson Stuart Harbinson in March 2003 and modified slightly in a 7 July 2003 report to the Trade Negotiations Committee.

The papers
Browse or download:

> Revised draft modalities,
8 February 2008. > Download, 61 pages: Word 644KB; pdf 318KB
Listen to the press conference following the release of this text    > help
> Unofficial guide to the 8 February 2008 ‘revised draft modalities’

> Chairperson’s working documents November 2007–January 2008
 

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Explanation
The 8 February 2008 revised draft modalities

What is this paper? This is NOT a “proposal” from the New Zealand ambassador (or from “the WTO”) in the sense that we would normally understand the word “proposal”. In other words, it is NOT his opinion of what would be “good” for world agricultural trade.

Rather, it is an assessment drawn from WTO member governments’ positions. It is the negotiations’ chairperson’s judgement of what they might be able to agree — based on what they have proposed and debated in over seven years of negotiations and their responses to his previous papers. He has stressed that this is not final. It puts the possible areas of agreement on paper so that members can react and further revise the draft. So this paper kicks off another intensive series of meetings and comment.

What are “modalities”? “Modalities” are ways or methods of doing something. Here, the ultimate objective is for member governments to cut tariffs and subsidies and to make these binding commitments in the WTO. The “modalities” will tell them how to do it, but first the “modalities” have to be agreed.

With 150 members and thousands of products, the simplest way to do this is to agree on formulas for making the cuts. These formulas are at the heart of the “modalities”. Once they have been agreed, governments can apply the formulas to their tariffs and subsidies to set new ceiling commitments.

However in order to agree to the formulas, members want a number of other concerns to be part of the deal. These include flexibility to allow some deviation from the formulas, tighter disciplines to ensure loopholes are plugged and trade-distorting subsidies are not camouflaged in permitted policies, and different treatment for developing countries and some other groups of members.

The result is a document that is considerably more complicated than formulas alone. But the aim is still to strike a deal that enables governments to open their markets and reduce trade-distorting subsidies. These new commitments are to be listed in documents called “schedules” of commitments.

What happens next? The latest drafts’ release kicks off yet another intensive series of meetings. After a period of further discussion in the agriculture negotiating groups, members intend to move to a new phase where agriculture, non-agricultural market access and some other areas of the Doha Round can be negotiated in comparison with each other with the hope that agreement can be reached in the next few weeks or months.

Eventually members want to negotiate an acceptable balance between the depths of cuts (the “level of ambition”) in agricultural and non-agricultural tariffs and agricultural subsidies as well as the size of cuts that they desire in each area.

So the drafts are still not the final word. They put the possible areas of agreement on paper so that members can react and further revise the texts.