WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy calls for intensified, text-based Doha negotiations to bridge gaps

Recent talks among senior negotiators have seen no backsliding on ambition in the Doha Round, but no tangible progress either, Director-General Pascal Lamy concluded on 23 October 2009 when he summarized the overall situation for the Trade Negotiations Committee, which he chairs. This is what he said:

Thank you all for coming to this meeting.

As I foreshadowed at Tuesday's General Council, and in the fax I sent out to delegations convening this meeting, I think it is useful for us today to review what has happened in this week in light of renewed activity in Geneva following the work programme we adopted a month ago. I also think it useful that we discuss the next steps in our work for November, so that the week of negotiations benefiting from the presence of Senior Officials — 23-27 November, can register a qualitative change in the negotiating dynamics and progress on substance.

As I indicated in my statement to the General Council which was circulated to delegations in document JOB(09)/143, in addition to Chairs' consultations and small group meetings that have been taking place during this week, I also held consultations on the key issues of agriculture, NAMA and Services together with the respective chairs, in variable geometry, with a view to providing Members with avenues for engagement. In addition, I held a Green Room meeting yesterday afternoon and I will be reporting to you shortly on these consultations.

Let me now briefly review each area of the negotiations in turn, starting with the areas I held consultations on this past Wednesday.

First, Agriculture. As has become clear during the course of this week, work in agriculture is proceeding smoothly and with the full of support of Members on a two-track approach. One track, template work, is advancing with contributions from many Members. Step 1 of this template work concerns the identification of base data and appropriate tables; this Step is expected to conclude soon with work to start in November on Step 2, namely the preparation of the templates to be used for scheduling commitments.

The other track of work in agriculture is the Chair's informal consultations on the bracketed and otherwise annotated issues in the draft modalities and associated documentation. There have been discussions on domestic support and market access issues, including useful work on sensitive products, tariff cap, TRQ expansion and tariff simplification. In November these consultations will broach the S&D issues in the modalities — SSM, special products, tropical products, preference erosion - with then the opportunity in December to return to some of the matters.

My sense from consultations which have taken place this week is that there is a collective endeavour to not lowering the current level of ambition in agriculture.

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Source: WTO