WTO: 2008 NEWS ITEMS
Agriculture negotiations chairperson Ambassador Crawford Falconer and
non-agricultural market access (NAMA) chairperson Don Stephenson
circulated their latest draft “modalities” on 8 February 2008.
The two documents are revisions of drafts previously circulated in July
2007
and are based on WTO member governments’ latest positions in the
discussions since September, one of the most intensive periods of
negotiations since the Doha Round talks began in 2001.
They are the chairs’ assessment of what might be agreed for the formulas
for cutting tariffs and trade-distorting agricultural subsidies, and
related provisions.
> Negotiations, implementation and development: the Doha agenda
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Lamy’s speeches
The two
papers were circulated at about the same time because members link the two
subjects. Their release kicks off yet another intensive series of meetings.
After a period of further discussion in the negotiating groups for each
subject, members intend to move to a new phase where these 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.
They are drawn from WTO member governments’ positions over several months of
the negotiations. They are the negotiations’ chairpersons’ judgements of
what governments might be able to agree — based on what members have
proposed and debated in over seven years of negotiations and their responses
to the chairs’ previous papers.
Therefore, these are not “proposals” from the New Zealand and
Canadian ambassadors in the sense that “proposals” are normally understood.
In other words, these are not the chairs’ opinions of what would be
“good” for world agricultural and non-agricultural trade, but what might be
accepted by all sides in the negotiations.
> Press release: Lamy welcomes revised agriculture and NAMA negotiating texts
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