With no clear directions yet if negotiators of the Doha round will reach an agreement by the end of June or end of the year, the European Union has announced that it will engage in bilateral and regional free trade agreements to improve Europe’s market access. What responses have civil society organisations across Europe, Latin America, and Asia made in opposition to EU’s move?

As the end-of-June deadline to conclude the Doha negotiations is fast approaching, with no concrete agreements yet, the European Union (EU) has announced that it will design bilateral trade deals with other regions and countries “to build a network of bilateral liberalisation, on which we can renew and build a new multilateral commitment,” said David O’Sullivan, head of the European Commission’s trade unit.

The EU is currently in talks with South Korea, India, Russia, the Gulf states and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). EU also intends to make its free-trade pacts with Central American and Andean trade blocs more open.

“We’ve only launched these bilateral negotiations precisely because we are reaching the end of the road with Doha, hopefully with a success, maybe with a failure, but in that case we need another agenda,” said O’Sullivan.

In response, around 80 civil society organisations across Europe, Latin America and Asia has expressed grave concerns, through its open letter to EU Ministers responsible for Trade and External Relations, calling on the Council of Ministers to reject the recommendations from the European Commission to negotiate free trade agreements (FTAs) with India, Republic of Korea, ASEAN, Central American and Andean nations. Instead, they are urging the Council of Ministers to initiate a transparent and participatory debate among a full range of stakeholders within and outside Europe to establish what type of trade policy is most appropriate for the EU.
 
As Myriam Vander Stichele, researcher for the Center on Research on Multilateral Corporations (SOMO) said, “It is shocking to see how this bilateral trade strategy is implemented only in the interests of big businesses who have privileged access to the European Commission while there was no meaningful public and political debate.”

Meanwhile, in a recently concluded two-day meeting in Brussels, Belgium, top negotiators from the EU, the United States, India, and Brazil, dubbed as G4, tried to iron out some of the main differences between developed and developing nations. Talks on the size of cuts in farm subsidies and tariffs are still deadlocked.

Ministers from the G4 are still optimistic on reaching a conclusion by the end of 2007. Yet many developing countries warned that the rush to meet the end-of-year deadline should not be at the expense of the content of the negotiations. Developed countries intend to protect their agriculture through high subsidies while prying open the industrial, services, and agricultural markets of the developing countries.

The G4 has scheduled two further meetings in June. If there is no prospect of an agreement by the end of June, efforts probably will be shelved for two years. Trade diplomats warn there could be more years of delay, or a complete collapse of the talks, if a deal is not done in 2007.

Sources:
“EU promises seeks to design bilateral trade deals that support future WTO-type pact” from bilaterals.org, posted on May 8, 2007, <http://www.bilaterals.org/article.php3?id_article=8206>.
“Last-gasp attempt to save Doha talks from cold storage” from The Times, posted on May 14, 2007, <http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article1785181.ece>.
“New generation of EU Free Trade Agreements threatens social justice, gender equality and sustainable development” from Women in Development Europe (WIDE), posted on April 2007, <http://www.wide-network.org/index.jsp?id=269>.
“Trade powers make new push for Doha breakthrough” from  MSNBC, posted on May 17, 2007, <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18715432/>.