EU at wit’s end to resolve impasse on Doha Round

The world’s main trading nations remain divided over a global trade deal despite a compromise plan put forward by the European Union to rescue the stalled Doha trade round, the EU’s trade chief said.
EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht said it was not clear how trading powers could resolve differences over the key sticking point – how to open up trade in industrial goods.

Senior negotiators from the US, EU, Brazil, India, China, Australia and Japan who met at the World Trade Organisation earlier this week to discuss the EU’s plan moved no closer to agreement, he said.
“I’m not prepared to risk losing the gains for the economy, for development and for the rules-based system without a serious attempt to identify a viable compromise,” De Gucht said after a meeting of EU trade ministers in Brussels.

“But I have to concede that at present the gaps between the main players remain large and it is not clear how the market access negotiations can proceed.”
The EU would nevertheless continue pressing for a solution, he said. Brussels floated its plan last month, widely seen as a last-ditch effort to rescue an accord intended to boost world trade and lift millions out of poverty.

The plan aims to tackle one of the biggest sticking points to the negotiations – industrial tariffs – to help bridge the divide between rich countries and major developing nations such as India and China.
Indian negotiator Rajeev Kher this week rejected the plan as unacceptable.
Reactions from the US and China were no more encouraging, EU sources said, yet no one is yet willing officially to admit defeat. “We will have to see in the coming days and coming weeks where this is leading us to,” De Gucht said.

The Doha Round will be discussed by senior officials at a summit of Pacific rim countries in Montana next week, as well as at G20 and G8 summits of big economies in France at the end of the month and at the WTO, he said.
The EU trade ministers meeting in Brussels said they supported the EU Commission’s attempts to forge a compromise.

Meanwhile, left-leaning politicians said European centre-left parties, which have struggled to capitalise politically from a bank-led economic crisis, must explain to voters better the benefits of globalisation.
Voters should also be reminded that the crisis was due to a failure of markets, allowed to grow via policies often associated with right-wing parties, political leaders said during a two-day conference held in the Norwegian capital, Oslo.

Far from the upbeat mood of earlier in the decade, when Britain’s Tony Blair and Germany’s Gerhard Schroeder dominated political life, European progressives gathered in Oslo for a subdued talks on “a post-crisis agenda for the centre left”.
In the EU, most left-wing parties are sitting in opposition. Among the major European economies, Germany, France and Britain are governed by centre-right governments.
Spain, Greece and Ireland are led by Socialists but struggle with high unemployment, lagging growth and debt crises.

The Spanish prime minister cancelled his participation at the last minute as he was battling with trade unions back home, while the Irish and Greek leaders who came spent their time fending off questions about their respective debt crises.
“After the crisis, we all spent a lot of time lamenting about why is this crisis lifting right-wing parties more than left-wing parties?,” Pascal Lamy, head of the WTO, said.

May 15^th, 2011

Source: gulf-times.com