Chairman's statement at the informal TNC meeting of 30 June 2006

JOB(06)/216

I would like to start by welcoming all delegations, especially Ministers and Senior Officials, to this informal meeting of the TNC at the level of Heads of Delegation.

The purpose of this meeting is to continue our discussions towards establishing modalities in Agriculture and NAMA. We have the texts which have been circulated by the Chairs, and I intend to brief you on recent developments.

When we last met on Wednesday in this open-ended format, I announced my intention to begin an intensive consultative process this week in various formats with these open-ended TNC meetings at its core. I also announced that we would have a formal meeting of the TNC, which has been convened for tomorrow, 1 July, and which could be continued in subsequent days as necessary.

I also announced my intention to conduct small-group consultations involving a number of Ministers and their representatives, which we started doing this morning, to be followed by open-ended informal TNC meetings, in order to ensure full transparency in the process.

Regarding this morning's meeting, its focus was mainly on making a start, and getting a clearer indication of possible movements in the positions of key players, particularly in the light of the meetings among delegations and Ministers that have taken place in Geneva and elsewhere in recent days, and we have had many of them.

As I advised Heads of Delegation last Wednesday, I intend to reconvene the ministerial consultative group later this afternoon, when I hope to move on to a more substantive and structured debate, on the basis of the key issues for initial focus in the areas I outlined to you earlier this week.

Let me just recall here that the sequencing of issues I have proposed for Ministerial discussion is not a ranking by importance. It is intended only to pave the way for a further round of discussion on these issues. All topics contained in the two draft texts are important to one constituency or another, and all these topics will have to be addressed as part of the full modalities – and there is no such thing as less than full modalities. I want to clarify this, particularly regarding a question on which I have received signals from a number of your ministers, which is the question of small and vulnerable economies. This will be considered as part of the development of the discussion on full modalities in both Agriculture and NAMA, at the appropriate moment.

Further meetings of the ministerial consultative group, as well as of these informal open-ended HODs, will be organized as necessary. I remind you of what I said on Wednesday, which is that all delegations have to be on call at very short notice in these coming days, and to watch the notice-boards for timings of these meetings.

At this stage, I must admit that the discussions between Ministers over the past few days and hours have been quite sobering. Although movement is appearing here and there, some of the numbers remaining on the table at this stage do not create a landing zone. However, as I have said many, many times before, failure to agree very soon on Agriculture and NAMA modalities means that we are putting at risk the future of the Round itself and, as a consequence of that, the WTO and the multilateral system. To reach agreement, we need numbers.

We also have, as you know, important deadlines looming on other subjects – services, trade facilitation, subsidies, including fisheries subsidies, countervailing measures and anti-dumping. These have been programmed for the end of July, and I believe that carrying unfinished modalities over into the next month would mean a major traffic jam and would further diminish our hopes of agreeing on many of these issues.

I think we all need to take a bit of distance and look at what is at stake if we fail in these negotiations. Quite frankly, it is difficult to exaggerate the importance of the Round. Its potential for contributing to global growth, correcting imbalances, and promoting development is obvious This Round is deeper, larger and fairer across the board than the Uruguay Round, and one that will in various ways level ambitiously the playing field in putting development at the centre of the system.

We have made some progress. If you look at what is on the table today, it goes well beyond what was done in the Uruguay Round ten years ago, and we know that this is not sufficient. This is true for agriculture in export competition, agricultural subsidies and market access. It is also true for industrial tariffs, notably given the new technology we are using to erode tariff peaks. We also have the duty-free quota-free decision from Hong Kong on LDCs, which remains, in terms of its implementation, to be decided. You know we are also working on this Aid for Trade package, and on cotton. All this is potentially on the table, and if we fail all this will disappear from the table.

We need therefore to make the next hours and days count. I would very simply urge all of you to reflect seriously and urgently on what the implications might be before it really is too late, and to reassess your positions and the way you have been negotiating until now. If things don't turn around radically in the next hours or days, we will quite frankly be facing a crisis. I don't think we have the luxury of continuing to give ourselves extensions at this stage. Procrastination will not bring success.

What we really need from the next days is to move the negotiations to the next phase, which is where the schedules can be drafted. In order to do this, and I repeat, you need full modalities, which means numbers, and in order to do that we need real negotiations. This is what Ministers have come here for. But at this stage, to be very frank, open and transparent with you, it is not clear that real negotiation will take place. This puts us in a difficult position. We are well into the red part of the red zone in terms of finishing the Round. You have all taken a commitment that we should do that this year, and for that there has to be an ability to negotiate. Pretending that we want to conclude the Round by the end of this year and showing an inability to negotiate in any real sense are two things which cannot go together. This is a question which cannot any longer be avoided.

So I hope that when we resume discussions, we will be in a position to hear fresh proposals. We have had a bit of that, but not enough. I remain of the view that agreement on the modalities is doable if we work intensively, constructively and with the necessary sense of urgency which I would like you to share with me. I remain fully prepared to play my part to facilitate the process of consultation and negotiation among you. It is now a question of whether you can exhibit the political courage that is needed to take the decisions and that will allow us to move forward to the next stage. It is possible, it is doable, but at this stage of the discussions my report to you is that we are not there yet.