I will briefly refer to what should happen at European level and the lessons for the European Union as a result of the failure of the Cancún talks. The European Union styles itself as the main advocate of a multilateral system for regulating trade. We welcome this. Equally, it was the main demandeur or proponent, of adding those four new issues to the talks in Cancún, something that we feel very much over-burdened the talks and distracted attention from the main issues.
The failure in Cancún stems from a misunderstanding or fudge in Doha two years ago. On the part of the richer countries, there was a misunderstanding about what the words "development round" really mean and there was also perhaps a mismatch of expectations. Our understanding of what was agreed in Doha was that the poorer countries had agreed to a new round of trade talks on the basis that they would ultimately lead to a liberalisation in the area of trading services and tariffs on industrial and manufactured goods and, in return, several issues would need to be addressed by the rich countries, particularly agriculture, where subsidies are distorting the market and affecting poor countries' chances of trading. There were also issues such as drips and access to HIV medicines, outstanding implementation issues from previous rounds which were not working properly and special treatment which took into account the particular position of developing countries. Those were the issues of interest to developing countries. They understood the deal to be that they would further open their markets to services and industrial goods if they got progress on them.
Even in Doha, the European Union was pressing for those four new issues to be added. The outcome of Doha as far as the European Union was concerned was that it was assumed that those things would be negotiated afterCancún. However, as far as the other countries were concerned, it would only happen after Cancún if there were explicit consensus in Cancún to launch negotiations. That misunderstanding or misinterpretation helped undermine the talks.
The lesson for the European Union and us now is, first, that multilateralism has been questioned. Are global trade deals the best way to manage trade for the good of all parties? The United States, for example, is much less committed to multilateralism in trade, as in other policies, than the European Union. Though the European Union has been very committed, it is now questioning everything and is in a period of reflection. The first lesson is that multilateralism remains the best way to deal with trade negotiations. In a bilateral context, developing countries are at the mercy of the larger trading partners. Any hope of access to the large market depends on their giving large numbers of concessions to the larger country. In a global agreement, there can be a package of trade-offs and developing countries can make a collective deal with the richer countries that benefits everyone. We hope the European Union will recommit to multilateralism as the way forward and, as a consequence, make the necessary moves to ensure multilateralism and talks at the WTO continue. The United States, for example, is not so committed.
In practice, this means that the European Union must recognise that what was agreed to in Doha was a development round in which issues of concern to developing countries - it was agreed, not simply by NGOs on the sidelines, but by the negotiators - would be at the centre of the talks. They must, therefore, agree to take off the agenda for the duration of the Doha development round the distraction of the Singapore issues, investment and competition. They should be taken from the table for now. They can return to them later if they wish. Instead, they must focus on the agreed key priorities of the Doha development agenda - agriculture, access to medicines and drips, special treatment for developing countries and the outstanding issues from previous rounds whose implementation was not satisfactory.
In return, there would be further liberalisation in services and agriculture. There is a possibility of a deal which would be good for everyone. It would work for development and the poor. This can be achieved in the next few years but if the European Union continues to insist on the four Singapore issues, it will undermine not just this round of negotiations but the WTO itself and the whole concept of multilateralism in trade negotiations. In content, that is the main recommendation.
There are one or two issues regarding the transparency of the process. One of the obvious outcomes of the WTO talks in Cancún was that it was clear that members of the WTO themselves were not in control of the talks. Far too much was under the control of the chairman of the talks, the Mexican Foreign Minister. For example, he took the decision to discuss the Singapore issues first - though everyone knew that they were the most polarised politically and that there was likely to be disagreement - rather than agriculture, on which there was some hope of progress and on which progress itself would have aided progress on the Singapore issues. People had made progress on the Singapore contingent on agriculture, yet the focus was on something that polarised matters further. The decision was taken to end the talks quite abruptly, something that took the European Union and other delegations completely by surprise, when they could have switched and talked about agriculture at that point.
Something must be done to allow the WTO members themselves more control over the agenda, how the negotiations are run and the negotiating texts. Those texts are produced after consultations, not by the members, but by one or two people meeting in rooms. Most of the time the negotiations were not between the G22 and the European Union. They involved the chair of a working group talking to people here and there and then going away and writing text up on his own. The WTO abandoned the UN style because it wished to be more efficient but that has now led to two collapses out of three meetings. In the UN style of negotiations, everyone's point of view is written down on a piece of paper with square brackets where they are not in agreement and over days and weeks, they negotiate and take away the square brackets as they get agreement. That would have been much more transparent and efficient for producing texts in which people felt they had some stake. The majority of countries felt that they had no stake in the text produced on the Saturday afternoon.
There is a definite need for reform inside the WTO and the European Union. It is extraordinary that, six weeks, or almost two months, after the collapse of the Cancún talks, there is still no clarity in the European Union about what it offered at the last minute to move talks on. It is not clear whether they offered to drop two or three issues from Singapore. That is because Committee 133 of the European Union meets in secret. We never see its minutes or agendas and do not know what is discussed. The members of the committee even do not appear to know what has been decided at meetings. If the meetings were minuted and we could see those minutes after the negotiations were over, it would allow a much more transparent process. These are examples.
There are other examples of how the decision making could be both streamlined, in a sense, and made more transparent. Primarily, from a development perspective and for the sake of the WTO, we believe this committee should recommend that Ireland supports the removal of those Singapore issues from the table for the duration of this development round and focuses on what were the agreed priorities for this particular series of negotiations. We can also look at how to make those negotiations more transparent and democratic and accountable.
