多哈回合凶多吉少

多哈回合于2001年启动，原定于2006年结束，结果到现在还没完。最大的挫折实在2008年7月日内瓦举行的小型部长会议，几乎达成协议，但因为印度和美国无法就农业产品的特殊保障机制达成一致，遂告惨痛失败。该次会议上中国首次被邀请加入WTO核心集团（G-7,包括澳大利亚、巴西、中国、欧盟、印度、日本、美国)，陈德铭部长大大出了风头，而中国也小小地背了黑锅，和印度一起被西方国家认为是阻碍谈判达成最后协议的反动力量。2008年小型部长会后各国同意将多哈回合的谈判期限延长到2010年。

新西兰人Crawford Falconer是WTO农业谈判的前任主席最近指出，按照目前的进度，2010年达成最后协议几乎没有可能。此论深得我心。对于多哈回合，我老人家一直很悲观，去年在WTO总部举办的WTO Public Forum上宣讲的论文也提出同样的观点。

Bridges Weekly Trade News Digest • Volume 14 • Number 9 • 10th March 2010

2010 Shaping Up as a Bad Year for Doha Deal, Climate Talks

2010 was the year in which two long-running sets of global negotiations were supposed to finally end in agreement: the WTO’s Doha Round of trade talks and multilateral negotiations to secure a deal to curb emissions of greenhouse gases. But fewer than 10 weeks into the year, officials involved in both sets of talks are issuing gloomy predictions for the odds of deals being struck during the remainder of 2010.

Crawford Falconer of New Zealand, the former chair of the agriculture negotiations at the WTO, spoke frankly last week about the prospects for securing a global deal to slash tariffs and subsidies before the end of the year. Ministers and heads of state have called repeatedly over the past 12 months for the talks to be brought to a close in 2010, but that deadline appears to be slipping fast.

“Let’s not kid ourselves,” Falconer told a conference in Canberra. “The reality is that the way we are going [at WTO headquarters] in Geneva right now, we won’t make” the 2010 deadline.

“We have not, since the failed July 2008 ministerial, made any material progress in bridging the gaps,” Falconer added, referring to the meeting of ministers in Geneva that collapsed after an epic nine days of negotiations. “In fact, in at least my own judgement, the gaps on the big issues have actually got wider than they were in 2008.”

US Trade Representative Ron Kirk offered a similar assessment when asked by a reporter on Tuesday whether he thought the 2010 goal was doable. “Well, considering that we have tried and failed three successive years, if past is prologue I don’t know if I would put too much stock in it,” Kirk said, according to a report from Reuters.

However, Kirk - whose country has taken much of the blame for the lack of progress in the negotiations - added that the talks should not be abandoned. “We think it’s worth staying at the table. … I don’t believe we should give up. A lot of good work has been done,” Kirk said.

With the Doha talks foundering, however, many governments are increasingly turning to bilateral and regional free trade deals to secure improved market access for their products. Some observers have fretted that a bevy of new deals at the sub-global level could further marginalise the struggling WTO talks.

 

Climate prospects also grim

Meanwhile, the climate talks may also achieve little forward movement in the remainder of 2010, according to Connie Hedegaard, the former Danish minister who spearheaded the major climate conference held in Copenhagen in December. She now serves as European Commissioner for Climate Action, a post she assumed last month.

“To get every detail set in the next nine months looks very difficult,” Hedegaard said in an interview with The Financial Times. “Europe would love that to happen, and I would love that to happen…but my feeling is that it is going to be very difficult to get a treaty.”

Prospects are dimming for the finalisation of a climate deal at a major summit in Cancun, Mexico at the end of this year, she said, noting that an agreement was more likely at a follow-up meeting in South Africa in 2011.

A major deadline for the climate talks looms the following year, as the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol is set to expire at the end of 2012.

ICTSD reporting; “Deal in WTO Doha round doubtful in 2010-USTR Kirk,” REUTERS, 9 March 2010; “No treaty this year, fears EU climate chief,” THE FINANCIAL TIMES, 9 March 2010.