Anti-poverty campaigners are demanding that the European Union halt its "aggressive attempts" to open up developing country markets for the benefit of European big business during World Trade Organisation talks in Geneva this week.
As part of the 'Seattle to Brussels' (S2B) network, development, environment, trade and human rights groups are urging the European Commission, the European Union (EU) executive, to abandon its "corporate agenda" so that an agreement which will also benefit developing countries can be reached during trade talks at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) which started Wednesday (Jul. 27).
The WTO General Council, the trade body's highest-level decision-making body which brings together representatives from all WTO member governments, is meeting this week in yet another attempt to put back on track the stalled Doha Development Round.
The talks, named after the Qatari capital where they were launched in 2001, have been progressing at a slow pace since they all but collapsed at a conference in Cancun, Mexico, in 2003..
The WTO meeting this week is meant to prepare a draft text to form the basis of reforms to be agreed at the WTO ministers meeting in Hong Kong in December.
But non-governmental organisations (NGOs) say the European Commission's "privileged relationship" with big business threatens the talks, and will serve only to ensure that EU policies meet commercial interests.
They say that unless the EU changes its undemocratic approach to negotiations and drops its corporate trade agenda, no deal at the WTO is better than a bad deal.
"It is not the case that some form of deal has to be reached at all costs. If a bad deal is all that is on offer for developing countries, then it will be better for them not to agree," Peter Hardstaff, head of policy at the British-based World Development Movement said in a statement Wednesday.
In a report released to coincide with the talks, the aid agency Oxfam blames rich countries' self-interest for the stalemate of the Doha round.
The report, From Development to Naked Self-Interest (pdf document), traces the progress of the Doha development round and alleges that a series of missed deadlines can be explained by rich countries' reluctance to meet commitments to reform.
"Each missed deadline is another step towards failure. Developing countries were promised that this round of talks would be about development and would redress the massive inequalities that exist in the world trading system. But rich countries have doggedly pursued their own self-interest, breaking promises every step of the way," Céline Charveriat, head of Oxfam's Make Trade Fair campaign said Wednesday.
Oxfam identifies 10 areas in which "naked self-interest" is blocking pro-development reform. These include rich countries' demands of reciprocity from poorer members and their insistence on a formula for agricultural tariff cuts that fails adequately to take into account the differences between developed and developing countries.
Charveriat says a successful conclusion of these talks could lift millions of people out of poverty, and is urging that all WTO members are involved in decisions.
"All developing countries should be treated equally and granted the 'special and differential treatment' that is enshrined in the Doha Declaration and the rules of the WTO. A deal that prioritises the concerns of the richer countries would be an enormous missed opportunity," she said.
The NGOs are also concerned that the presence of EU trade chief Peter Mandelson, who will represent the EU at the talks, will only serve to promote the EU's business agenda.
Members of S2B are planning a demonstration outside the Commission headquarters Friday (Jul. 29) to protest against the EU's corporate agenda.
"With Peter Mandelson as EU trade commissioner, democracy takes another blow from spin and big business. Big corporations will be the big winners, people and the environment the losers of the EU's trade agenda. The time has come to fundamentally change the trade policies of the EU and to make them just, sustainable and democratically accountable," Alexandra Wandel, trade coordinator of Friends of the Earth Europe said in a statement Wednesday.
Olivier Hoedeman from the Corporate Europe Observatory, an Amsterdam-based campaign group which monitors the political influence of corporations and their lobby groups says Mandelson is "simply continuing the tradition of privileged access and influence" developed by previous trade commissioners.
"Documents obtained by CEO via the EU's freedom of information rules confirm that officials continue to nurture what we would consider inappropriate relations with corporate lobby groups like the Trans-Atlantic Business Dialogue and the European Services Forum," he told IPS Wednesday.
"The documents confirm that the European Commission's primary objective in the GATS talks is not sustainable development but to secure commercial benefits for EU-based services multinationals," he added. The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) is an international trade agreement that came into effect in 1995 and operates under the umbrella of the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
But Hoedeman says that since the collapse of the WTO talks in Cancun, developing countries have started to stand up for themselves.
"Fortunately, developing countries have in recent years become far more self-confident in rejecting EU WTO demands that are presented as pro-poor and 'sustainable development' but are really only beneficial for Northern corporations," he said.
"If the EU insists on imposing its GATS agenda and refuses to abandon its protection of European big farming interests, a similar scenario to the one in Cancun is likely to happen in Hong Kong," he added.
-->See the Choike special coverage: "Sixth WTO Ministerial Conference - Hong Kong 2005"
