Azevêdo Urges WTO Members to “Shift Gears” in Doha Restart Effort

Efforts to develop a work programme aimed at revamping the stalled Doha Round negotiations are ready to enter a “second stage,” WTO Director-General Roberto Azevêdo reported to the global trade body on Monday, after four months of preliminary consultations among members.

“In all these conversations, I have sensed that people want to find a way forward - they know what is at stake for the multilateral trading system. People want to finish the job,” the WTO chief said at a meeting of the Trade Negotiations Committee, which is tasked with the Doha Round talks. “Our task now is to match our desire for progress with an acceptance of the practical steps we need to achieve it.”

The 159-member body has spent the first quarter of this year discussing ways to re-energise the troubled negotiations, building upon the success of last December’s Bali ministerial conference, which saw the WTO’s first multilateral deal in nearly two decades.

Trade ministers in Bali have given WTO members until the end of 2014 to chart a path for concluding the rest of the Doha Round, which was formally declared at an impasse in late 2011, ten years after its launch.

While members were able to clinch a deal in Bali on a few select Doha deliverables - primarily on trade facilitation, along with a few select agriculture- and development-related issues - the bulk of the talks has effectively been on the backburner for the past several years.

The 2014 talks have so far been positive, Azevêdo said; however, these have yet to produce “anything very new in terms of members’ stated positions,” with members largely repeating “well-known arguments.” Sources confirm that the consultations are still in very preliminary stages, as members aim to set the groundwork for the next phase of discussions.

“It’s time to shift things up a gear,” the Director-General urged.

2008 modalities?

At a meeting of the WTO’s General Council a month ago, Azevêdo reported that members are largely in agreement that any Doha work plan would need to deal with the most difficult issues of the talks - agriculture, non-agricultural market access (NAMA), and services - a sentiment that was reiterated on Monday. (See Bridges Weekly, 20 March 2014)

Of these three, several members have said that the ambition seen in agriculture will largely determine how far the other two areas will be able to advance - and, in turn, what progress might be possible in the various remaining topics of the Round. Many have said that there needs to be balance both across agriculture, NAMA, and services, but also within these topics individually.

The next question for the global trade body is what to use as a starting point for this new chapter in the Doha Round talks. Specifically, members have spent recent meetings discussing how closely they should rely on the so-called 2008 modalities - essentially draft blueprints that were issued that year in the hopes of concluding a Doha deal.

“Some have been saying that we need to conclude our negotiations using the 2008 texts as they are. Of course, these texts are an important - indeed fundamental - part of how to assess the situation,” Azevêdo said on Monday.

The 2008 texts could serve as parameters for shaping the next phase, he said, and reflect years of work and insights.

However, he warned, members are no more likely to agree on these texts now than they were six years ago, when the talks suffered a high-profile collapse. “If any of you insists that those texts are cast in stone and unalterable, then you have made a choice; a choice that irreparably condemns our efforts to failure,” he added.

The question of which starting point to use has been especially difficult with regards to agriculture, with members openly sparring on how to proceed. (See Bridges Weekly, 3 April 2014) Developing countries have been among those to push for using the 2008 texts as a starting point in this area, though others, such as the US, have been calling for new data to give the talks a fresh start.

“As we noted in each of these negotiating groups, it is essential that our work in these areas is well-informed by the latest data on trends in trade and barriers to trade,” US Ambassador to the WTO Michael Punke said at Monday’s meeting, highlighting in particular the need for new information on agricultural subsidies.

“Members who clamour for progress in Doha but fail to meet this basic obligation will have little credibility,” Punke warned.

EU Ambassador Angelos Pangratis similarly noted that the world today is far different from what it was five or ten years ago, and that members’ discussions “must reflect the problems and questions we face today.”

China, meanwhile, has warned against skipping or ignoring the previous draft texts, noting that WTO members’ “greatest assets are our experiences and lessons gained from the past.”

Beijing also warned against the introduction of any new requests or concepts that may be “at odds with the DDA mandate and detrimental to the completion of the work programme,” according to a copy of Chinese Ambassador Yu Jianhua’s statement seen by Bridges.

Next steps

The date of the next TNC has not yet been formally confirmed, though a meeting of the General Council is currently slated for 12-13 May.

Other key events on the international trade calendar that could provide indications of “next steps” for the Doha discussions include the annual “mini-ministerial” held on the sidelines of the Paris meeting of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, along with a meeting of Asia-Pacific trade ministers in China, both in May.

Trade ministers from the Group of 20 major industrialised and emerging economies are also set to meet in Australia in July, just days before the WTO’s last General Council meeting ahead of the summer break.