New Delhi, Sept 28: With the collapse of Cancun WTO ministerial, the investment rules and competition policy may go the labour standards way as it will now be difficult for developed nations to bring them into the work programme. Official sources told that European Union's legitimacy to bring in the issues into the agenda in future has been dented after it virtually conceded developing countries' demand to drop them from the work programme at Cancun and it would find it difficult to raise these issues.
Though no declaration was adopted due to the failure of talks, EU would not be in a position to raise it, as nearly 80 developing countries had opposed any negotiations on Singapore issues comprising investment, competition policy, trade facilitation and transparency in government procurement.
Legally, however, EU could still try to bring the issue again into the agenda but it is unlikely that it will do so as it had lost all moral ground after the collapse of the ministerial in Mexico just as in the case of labour standards after Seattle debacle.
This was corroborated by Commerce Minister Arun Jaitley who had said "legitimacy of two important Singapore issues investment and competition has been substantially dented for future, after EU wavered on them at Cancun."
Bureau Report