Agriculture Negotiations at the WTO: Cancún Outlook Report
This paper is the second intelligence report of series III detailing topical developments in the ongoing WTO agriculture trade negotiations. The report series is being prepared by the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD). This report, issued in April 2003, wraps up the recent developments in the ‘modalities’ phase2 since issuing the last ICTSD intelligence report up to the 31 March 2003 deadline by which Ministers had agreed in Doha to establish modalities for the ongoing agriculture negotiations. Furthermore, as WTO Members were unable to adopt such framework accord during the most recent 25 - 31 special (negotiating) session of the Committee on Agriculture (CoA), the paper makes an attempt to foresee how WTO trading partners could be trying to manage the resulting crisis so as to keep the momentum alive as well as to maximise the likelihood of trade ministers hammering out a compromise modalities text at the forthcoming WTO Ministerial Conference in Cancún, Mexico.
When the Chair of the CoA special session, Stuart Harbinson, presented his first draft of possible modalities for the agriculture negotiations, Members’ reactions reflected exactly those divergences in positions and approaches which had been emerging ever since the reopening of the agriculture negotiations in early 2000. Predictably, Members such as the US and those of the Cairns group criticised the lack of ambition in Harbinson’s rather balanced proposal, whereas “cautious” liberalisers including the EU, Japan, Switzerland and Norway took the view that the new commitments proposed would go way too far. For their part, non-Cairns developing countries mostly welcomed the special and differential treatment (S&D) provisions spread over the modalities text, but also said that further work needed to be done in that direction.
Whether WTO Members will be able to bridge the many deep gaps prevailing in their negotiation position by the approaching 10 - 14 September Ministerial in Cancún, remains to be seen. On the one hand, it appears that EU member states would have to agree on a rather ambitious reform model for their Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) prior to the Cancún conference so as to provide the European Commission with more negotiating manoeuvrability. On the other hand, it would also be required that the two ‘elephants’ in agriculture trade - i.e. the US and the EU - could reconcile their core objectives which they are pursuing in the Doha negotiations. However, as virtually all players in the 146-Member WTO of today have to be taken on board, everyone would need to be able to compromise to a certain degree. Ironically, the wider dynamics surrounding the current Iraq crisis could prove to become an important catalyser of the Doha Round, as key Members - just as it happened at Doha after September 11 and its follow-up - might feel encouraged to underline their commitment to the multilateral trading system.
This report is divided into three sections:
• Section 1 is a brief introduction setting the agriculture negotiations in the overall context of activities at the WTO.
• Section 2 focuses on key themes within phase III of the negotiations, providing descriptive and analytical detail of expressed proposals.
• Section 3 looks ahead at the upcoming issues in connection with the negotiations in agriculture during the ‘extra time’ of the modalities phase.
The methodology used in compiling this report combined comprehensive in-house analytical work as well as extensive outreach to country delegates based in Geneva and representatives of local non-governmental organisations.