Lamy offers some further reflections on Cancun

Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation

Authors

Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation

Date Issued

2003

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Type

News Item

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Open Access

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CTA. 2003. Lamy offers some further reflections on Cancun. Agritrade, December 2003. CTA, Wageningen, The Netherlands.

Permanent link to cite or share this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10568/52820

External link to download this item: http://agritrade.cta.int/Back-issues/Agriculture-monthly-news-update/2003/December-2003

Abstract/Description

In a speech to the European Institute in Washington on November...

Notes

In a speech to the European Institute in Washington on November 4th 2003 EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy reflected on the causes of the failure of the Cancun WTO Ministerial. He noted that the G90 - the ACP countries, together with other LDCs - may not have felt that they had 'a large enough stake in these negotiations to want them to succeed'. He recognised their concern over the process of preference erosion on the EU market, saying that 'we clearly have to address this concern, or the development round simply will not succeed'. This followed statements to a conference of the Journal of Common Market Studies where Commissioner Lamy highlighted African concerns that 'they had relatively little to gain and relatively much to lose in terms of their preferences, in a successful, multilateral market-opening outcome. Comment: How the EU intends to address the issue of preference erosion is clearly a critical factor for the ACP in their approach both to WTO and EPA negotiations. It remains to be seen what of substance the EC will come up with to address this issue. To date for example, the Commission has shown little inclination to explore the concept of 'compensatory trade measures' as a vehicle for addressing the decline in the value of ACP trade preferences arising as a consequence of CAP reform. Were the EU to substantially develop and apply this concept under existing Cotonou Agreement mechanisms, ACP and LDC fears over preference erosion at the WTO level could begin to diminish.