Commonwealth calls for WTO courage

By Alex Singleton | 27 November 2005

At a summit in Malta yesterday, Commonwealth leaders called for developed countries to demonstrate the "political courage" needed to make the WTO's Doha round work. The Bangkok Post says the statement was intended to put "pressure on Brussels, where the E.U. is based, and on countries like France, which insist their farmers should be protected by the effects of globalisation."

The statement says: "We note the offer on agriculture made by the United States of America and express the hope that the European Union and others who maintain high levels of agriculture protection respond in the same spirit." They called for a WTO agreement for "the elimination of all forms of export subsidies by 2010".

It follows a call from the Commonwealth Business Forum on Thursday to pursue a Commonwealth Free Trade Area "if the Hong Kong summit next month fails to deliver a trade agreement."

In our report, 2005 and Beyond: The Future of Trade, Development & International Institutions, Europe's top trade economist, Dr Razeen Sally, says that far from getting an agreement in Hong Kong in December, it could take another couple of years for the Doha round to conclude. Moreover, he writes that there are:

increasing limits to WTO-style multilateralism. The GATT was successful because it had (with hindsight) a slimline, relatively simple agenda, and small, club-like decision making, glued together by Cold-War alliance politics. Now, the WTO agenda is technically more complicated, administratively more burdensome and politically much more controversial; decision making is unwieldy in a general assembly with near-universal membership; and the unifying glue of the Cold War has dissolved.

For the WTO to work after the Doha Round, I think it needs to scale back ambitions and expectations. Market-access and rule-making negotiations should be more modest and incremental; and maybe trade rounds should become a thing of the past. There should be more emphasis on the unsexy, everyday tasks of improving policy transparency and administering existing rules better. Dispute settlement should not degenerate into backdoor lawmaking. Finally, core decision making should remain intergovernmental. Opening it to non-governmental actors would result in an agenda hijacked by organised minorities pursuing a plethora of conflicting objectives.