OMC: NOUVELLES 2006
Lundi 1er mai 2006
COMITÉ DES NÉGOCIATIONS COMMERCIALES
M. Lamy en appelle à un “sentiment d'urgence partagé” dans les négociations commerciales
Comme le Directeur général Pascal Lamy l'a indiqué dans la déclaration liminaire prononcée devant le Comité des négociations commerciales le 1er mai 2006, l'élaboration d'un consensus dans les négociations “reste faisable mais seulement si un sens de l'urgence — que tous ne semblent pas toujours partager — commence à émerger dans chaque délégation, sans exception”. “Nous devons désormais nous concentrer de manière intensive, continue et efficace sur un processus de négociation basé sur des textes et solidement ancré à Genève”, a-t-il ajouté.
> Négociations en cours et mise en œuvre: le Programme de Doha
> La Déclaration de Doha expliquée
> La Décision de Doha sur la mise en œuvre expliquée
> Comment les négociations sont organisées
> Le Comité des négociations commerciales
VOIR AUSSI:
> Communiqués de presse
> Nouvelles
> Allocutions:
Pascal Lamy
Déclaration de Pascal Lamy
You will recall that at our Informal Heads of Delegation meeting on 24 April
we reviewed recent progress in the negotiations and considered the next
appropriate steps in our process. According to our normal practice, my
statement to the Informal Heads of Delegation meeting has been
circulated as JOB(06)/127.
I think we had a good meeting last Monday. We collectively faced up to
the fact that we have not been able to establish modalities in
Agriculture and NAMA, or reach an agreement on the RTA Transparency
Mechanism, by April 30. We faced these facts squarely, but not
sensationally. We also heard expressions of disappointment from
delegations, but we did not hear recriminations or attempts at blame
shifting. Instead — and I think this is very important for the nature of
our process here — we engaged in a constructive discussion and showed a
high level of convergence on how to move forward in the most efficient
and practical manner. This is encouraging for the work ahead. It is also
encouraging that political commitment to conclude the negotiations
successfully has been reaffirmed in many quarters since last week. In
short, we have had a disappointment which we have to acknowledge, but
not a disaster, and we have already moved to convert disappointment into
determination.
Last week we also had the opportunity to listen to the analysis of the
Chairs of Agriculture, NAMA and Rules as well as their proposals for the
next stage of negotiations. From their interventions last Monday, it is
clear that some hard work has been undertaken over the past few weeks by
all delegations and officials, both Geneva and in capitals, even if we
are still some way from where we had hoped to be. As we will hear today,
the other areas of the negotiations are also making progress.
There is little doubt in my mind that the coming weeks will place
significant strain on all of us, but as we agreed last Monday, we will
now have to be on-call on a permanent basis. I am, of course, sensitive
to the capacity concerns and constraints of smaller delegations and, to
the extent possible, we must make every effort to organise our work with
this concern in our minds.
What is imperative now is to make significant progress on key issues as
quickly as possible, so that we can reach agreement on modalities in
agriculture and NAMA rapidly, being clear in our minds that it is now a
question of weeks rather than months.
We all know that the Round consists of a much wider range of issues than
just Agriculture and NAMA. The priorities and ambitions of delegations
range across the full negotiating agenda of the Single Undertaking, as
well as the other areas of the DDA. At the same time, we also know that
establishing modalities in Agriculture and NAMA is necessary to unlock
other issues. Our negotiations must move as a convoy, but some ships are
in front — and there are reasons for this. In setting the April
deadlines in Hong Kong, Ministers established this sequence which both
our mandate and the logic of the negotiations require us to respect.
Let me now briefly highlight a few points on Agriculture and NAMA.
On Agriculture, work has already intensified since the Chairman
reported to the informal HODs a week ago. Ambassador Falconer has held
intensive consultations using reference papers, and a number of
delegations have made constructive proposals. Although there is still
much to do in a short time, it is encouraging that delegations now
appear ready to engage fully in this process.
After the substantive discussions that have taken place on export
competition, blue box, green box, special safeguard mechanism or
tropical products, we urgently need more work and more texts on special
products and sensitive products, so that the impact of cuts in tariffs
can be translated into a quantum of increased market access, which is
what ministers should negotiate.
On NAMA, Ambassador Stephenson has been consulting widely with
delegations. Although it is clear that agreement on core modalities
still remains elusive, I understand that there is a willingness among
delegations to engage in the intensive process envisaged by the Chair —
and this is of course fundamental for a successful outcome. Here again,
good technical work has taken place on paragraph 8 and 6, but the
limited number of developing countries which will have to implement
formula cuts still have to work on simulations in order to determine the
specific lines which they would want to shield from the formula
reduction.
In the area of Rules (RTAs), the Chairman provided us with a concise
report last Monday, in which he emphasized that we are close to an
agreement on a decision on RTA transparency. However, two areas of
divergence remain, one regarding the bodies or body that would apply
this transparency mechanism and the other regarding the scope of the
transparency mechanism. I urge delegations to re-double their efforts to
assist Ambassador Valles in bringing this important negotiation to a
successful conclusion.
Let me now turn briefly to the other areas of the negotiations.
On Anti-dumping, Subsidies and Countervailing Measures,
including Fisheries Subsidies, a large number of new proposals were
received since the last meeting of the Group: 22 new papers on
anti-dumping, five new papers on subsidies disciplines and four new
papers on fisheries subsidies. The Chairman decided that additional time
to advance the work of the Group is needed, in order to be prepared to
table a Chairman's text by the summer break, should conditions be
appropriate, and has therefore scheduled a further dedicated session on
subsidies for the end of the month.
In the Services negotiations serious progress is being made.
Twenty plurilateral meetings have taken place since our last TNC,
gathering groups of requesting and requested Members, based on
twenty-two collective requests submitted in accordance with the Hong
Kong Declaration. Another round of request-offer meetings, plurilateral
as well as bilateral, has been scheduled for mid-May, so as to keep the
momentum and expedite the overall process of the services negotiations.
In the area of S&D, Members have continued their consideration of
the remaining Agreement-specific proposals and have also begun work on
the outstanding issues — and this is a good sign. However, progress has
been rather limited with most Members sticking to their earlier
positions. As far as Duty Free Quota Free market access for LDCs is
concerned, stakeholders are working in order to operationalise the
decision we took at Hong Kong.
In the Trade Facilitation area, negotiations continue to progress
well. Two important new proposals at the last meeting dealing with S&D
treatment and capacity-building have ensured that all three pillars of
these negotiations are being addressed in a balanced and mutually
supportive way. The negotiations are moving towards text-based drafting,
as called for by Ministers in Hong Kong.
On Trade & Environment, there has been a good start to the
process of examination of products in the CTESS with technical work
launched. Another technical discussion around mid-May has been agreed to
keep the process on track.
In TRIPS and Dispute Settlement, we must quickly develop a
more complete picture of the issues that could be the basis of a final
agreement in the negotiations.
On Cotton, the last meeting of this committee was just last
Friday and I understand that a useful discussion of the C4 proposal took
place. On the development assistance aspects of cotton, at this time, I
can inform Members that progress in this area is in positive evolution.
As a follow up to the 1 August 2004 Decision, and in line with
instructions given to the Director-General by Ministers in Hong Kong, I
will be making a Mid-Term Progress Report in my capacity as
Director-General to the 15 May meeting of the General Council.
On preference erosion, the Secretariat organized a seminar on the
erosion of preferences in the areas of Agriculture and NAMA on 3 April.
The discussions at that meeting have helped shed more light on the
substance of the issue and on other recent work undertaken on preference
erosion, including by other institutions. Clearly, this issue remains on
the table in the on-going work of the Agriculture and NAMA groups. While
the contours of this issue are becoming more apparent, work now needs to
be concentrated on discussing possible solutions to address this issue.
To complete the picture, I would once again like to review progress in
some of the other areas of our work under the DDA, even if they are not
strictly speaking under the TNC.
On Aid for Trade, our two-track process continues to move forward.
The first track — my own consultations — has reaffirmed the strong
commitment among donors, as well as multilateral and regional agencies,
to mobilizing significant additional resources for Aid for Trade. As for
the second track — the Task Force on operationalizing Aid for Trade —
Members have now met three times, and discussed delivery mechanisms and
monitoring, as well as definitional issues, the scope of Aid for Trade,
current flows and future trends. The Task Force has broadly consulted
with multilateral financial and development agencies, regional
development banks, relevant UN agencies as well as various groups of
members, including the non-resident members during the Geneva week.
After this intensive period of consultation and fact-finding, the next
step will be to examine the linkage between these issues, and how they
might fit together into a coherent whole.
On the Integrated Framework (IF), work has intensified among the
different stakeholders of the Task Force on the Enhancement of the IF.
We are hopeful that the Task Force will be submitting recommendations
soon to the IF managing body, the IF Working Group and to the members of
the IF Steering Committee. All these bodies meet in the second week of
May.
On issues related to Small Economies, it is important that we
continue to pursue the aim of providing responses to these issues in
relevant areas of the negotiations, in particular Agriculture and NAMA.
There have been some hopeful signs of constructive thinking in this
respect. In addition, work is continuing under the Work Programme in the
Dedicated Session of the Committee on Trade on Development, whose Chair
will report to the General Council later this month. I also understand
that some good progress was made last week at the Dedicated Session's
most recent meeting.
So, over the broad scope of the DDA, the picture is by no means a bleak
one. The fact remains, however, that all this effort and all this
progress could be put at risk if negotiators fail to unlock the modality
issues.
I will now provide an update on my work on Implementation, in my
capacity as Director-General, and further to the reports I made at the
February and March meetings of the TNC.
In keeping with the Hong Kong Decision, I have continued my consultative
process on all outstanding implementation issues under paragraph 12(b)
of the Doha Ministerial Declaration, without prejudice to the positions
of Members. In this process, I have been assisted by a number of the
Chairpersons of concerned WTO bodies acting as my Friends and two of my
Deputy Directors-General, Valentine Rugwabiza for TRIMs issues and Rufus
Yerxa for the issues of GIs and TRIPS/CBD.
On the issue of GI extension, DDG Rufus Yerxa has held a further
dedicated consultation on 13 April to complete the earlier discussions
held on 16, 21 and 23 March of the compilation of the points and
questions that delegations had identified as needing attention.
Delegations completed their discussion of the remaining 38 (out of the
total of 91) issues and questions. While much of the discussion was
repetitious, some of the questions raised enabled Members to explore
certain issues in greater depth than previously. At the end of the
meeting, DDG Yerxa said that he would be informally in contact with
individual delegations to sound out where delegations feel we are, and
what should be the next steps in the consultative process.
On the issue of TRIPS and CBD, Mr. Yerxa has been in touch with
interested delegations and further open-ended consultations have been
convened for the end of this week, on 4 and 5 May, with a view to
exploring how to move forward on the key issues. I will report to you
again on this matter at a later stage.
On all the other Implementation issues — the other TRIPS issues,
Balance of Payments, Market Access, TRIMs, Customs Valuation, Safeguards
and Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT), the situation has not evolved
significantly since my last report. In many of these areas, the ball is
essentially in the court of the proponents. I think that the time is
fast approaching when we will need to agree among ourselves on which
issues still to actively pursue. I do not think there is much point in
expending our scarce time on issues which, in practice if not in a
formal sense, have either lapsed, been overtaken by events or reached
the limit of possible progress or in re-activating issues which have
become inactive with the tacit acceptance of Members.
I am hopeful that, in my next report on all outstanding implementation
issues under paragraph 12(b), I will be able to reflect progress in at
least some areas. But as we all know, any Chair can only report the
convergence achieved by Members.
That concludes my report on Implementation.
Before I conclude my introductory statement, let me repeat that this is
and will remain a negotiation among you all. And as it is you who hold
the key to the success of these negotiations, I urge each and every one
of you to engage directly with each other at every level. I do not
believe that we have lost the opportunity to produce positive results,
but we really have no more time to spare. We must now focus our efforts
on working intensively, continuously and in an effective manner on a
text-based negotiating process, which is solidly anchored in Geneva. And
let me reiterate our collective responsibility to ensure an inclusive,
bottom-up, transparent and participatory process. Let us be clear: we
will not get there by the work of magic, but by our collective
determination and effort to breach remaining gaps and find consensus.
This, in my view, remains doable, but only if a sense of urgency — which
I feel is not always shared by you all — starts appearing in each and
every delegation.
Rapports des présidents des organes établis par le CNC (Tous les documents seront disponible sous peu) (TN/CTD/15, TN/DS/16, TN/MA/18, TN/RL/17, TN/S/27, TN/TE/15)
Déclaration du Président du CNC, M. Pascal Lamy, à la réunion du CNC
du 1er mai
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