The European Commission was secretly preparing to sabotage plans to help poor countries trade their way out of poverty, as backstairs wrangling dominated the opening day of the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) talks in Cancun, Mexico.
A confidential paper not shown even to member governments revealed that the commission was planning to water down the modest concessions on offer to the world’s poorest countries.
British officials were left in the embarrassing position of borrowing a copy of the leaked European Union paper from aid campaigners so that they could find out what the commission was planning.
”We aren’t aware of the status of this paper and we weren’t consulted on it,” said Margaret Beckett, Britain’s Agriculture Secretary.
In an attempt to safeguard the interests of its six-million farmers, the commission is seeking to remove all mention of eliminating export subsidies from the WTO meeting’s final declaration. The move has enraged developing countries, who won a pledge from the West two years ago that phasing out payments, which allow subsidised Western produce to be dumped on world markets, would form a centrepiece of the Doha development round.
”The EU still claims it wants this to be a development round,” said Adriano Campolina Soares, of ActionAid. ”Yet for all its fine language, the EU’s proposals attack developing countries in every area of the talks.”
The news emerged as a coalition of 21 developing countries, led by Brazil, sought to prevent the United States and the EU from taking over the agenda with their own joint proposals. Joined by China and India, the group said it represented more than 60% of the world’s farmers.
The WTO’s Director General, Supachai Panitchapkdi, sought to defuse the growing row.
WTO sources said a draft negotiating text prepared by ambassador Carlos Perez del Castillo of Uruguay was only a starting point, even though it largely reflected the position of the EU and US.
Brazil has proposed an alternative text, but WTO officials fear that the meeting could be bogged down in a lengthy procedural dispute and end in failure.
Europe was looking increasingly isolated as the talks kicked off. As the focus for the developing countries’ anger over agriculture, it was facing an uphill struggle to achieve its main objective at the talks — a new global deal on investment and competition policy, and protection for its traditional food names, such as parma ham.
The US, by contrast, was preparing to offer concessions on cotton to some of the poorest African countries, one of the key demands being made by development agencies. The US spends £2,5-billion a year supporting its 25 000 cotton farmers.
Privately, trade sources say the EU’s chances of securing a deal in investment are slim while it is seen as the main obstacle to reform of agriculture.
In a speech read to the gathering, the United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan, accused rich countries of leaving billions of people in poverty by their unfair trade policies. — Â