- News>
- World
EU offers concessions to re-start WTO world trade talks
Brussels, Nov 26: The European Commission offered today to make concessions to re-start world trade talks after the collapse of a key WTO meeting in September, but called for its partners to show similar flexibility.
Brussels, Nov 26: The European Commission offered today to make concessions to re-start world trade talks after the collapse of a key WTO meeting in September, but called for its partners to show similar flexibility.
European Union trade commissioner Pascal Lamy,
warning that a repeat of the collapse of World Trade
Organisation talks in the Mexican resort of Cancun would
spell "disaster" and the definitive end of the so-called Doha
round of global trade negotiations.
"While we can and are ready to make further adjustments in the EU position, what we need is a round in which all contribute and make adjustments, developed and developing countries alike, according to their capacities," said Lamy.
Lamy, speaking ahead of an attempt to relaunch the WTO talks next month, confirmed that Brussels was willing to separate negotiations on "one or all" of four hotly contested topics -- the so-called Singapore issues -- to break the trade talks deadlock.
The Singapore issues, named after the venue where they were first taken up in 1996, are: cross-border investment, competition, trade facilitation and government procurement.
WTO ministers gathered in Cancun in early September in a bid to breathe life into moribund trade-liberalization talks that were launched in the Qatari capital of Doha on November 2001 and are due to conclude by January 1, 2005.
Bureau Report
"While we can and are ready to make further adjustments in the EU position, what we need is a round in which all contribute and make adjustments, developed and developing countries alike, according to their capacities," said Lamy.
Lamy, speaking ahead of an attempt to relaunch the WTO talks next month, confirmed that Brussels was willing to separate negotiations on "one or all" of four hotly contested topics -- the so-called Singapore issues -- to break the trade talks deadlock.
The Singapore issues, named after the venue where they were first taken up in 1996, are: cross-border investment, competition, trade facilitation and government procurement.
WTO ministers gathered in Cancun in early September in a bid to breathe life into moribund trade-liberalization talks that were launched in the Qatari capital of Doha on November 2001 and are due to conclude by January 1, 2005.
Bureau Report