The Hindu Business Line : The new WTO mid-June `deadline'

Having been through the complex maze of setting deadlines and seeing them missed, there is now no one view about the setting of deadlines as far as the Doha negotiations are concerned. On farm issues, the current state of play does not inspire any hopeful expectations about a favourable outcome.

Officially, the point is being intentionally broadcast that there are no new deadlines for the ongoing Doha Round negotiations in sectors such as agriculture and industrial tariffs, probably keeping in mind the string of missed deadlines which have plagued the discussions for more than two years now.

As a matter of interest, while everyone's attention now is focussed on the missing of the April 30 time limit for farm modalities, it will be worthwhile recalling that the Doha Round, launched in November 2001, had originally set March 2003 as the deadline for agriculture modalities.

In fact, having been through this complex maze of setting deadlines and seeing them missed, there is now no one view about the setting of deadlines as far as the Doha negotiations are concerned.

While there is one school of thought which feels that deadlines should no longer be set in view of the damage that will be done to the overall prospects of the Round itself in the event they are missed (which, given past experience, is only too likely to happen), there is another point of view which would like negotiations on the various sectors to be time-barred so that there are no illusions about where the entire Doha Round process is heading.

Thus, while the chair for the agriculture meetings, the New Zealand envoy, Mr Crawford Falconer, has been forthright in his view that there is no point in setting specific deadlines because "deadlines have no credibility in my view", there are others who feel that without a schedule of negotiations (which is nothing if not a deadline by another name), there is no point in conducting the wide-ranging bargaining, specially because there is, after all, an end date to the larger process (the completion of the Doha Round negotiations, that is, early 2007).

`Deadline status'

After the failure of the April 30 time-limit, what precisely is the "deadline status" now? To start with, no precise date has been set for the period ahead in the sense April 30 was.

Incidentally, the Hong Kong Ministerial declaration itself set two specific dates as important milestones for the Doha Round. Paragraph 10 of the declaration reads: "However, we recognise that much remains to be done in order to establish modalities and to conclude the negotiations.

Therefore, we agree to intensify work on all outstanding issues to fulfil the Doha objectives; in particular, we are resolved to establish modalities no later than 30 April 2006 and to submit comprehensive draft Schedules based on these modalities no later than 31 July 2006".

April 30 (and maybe also July 31) are now of academic interest, but this does not mean that a new road map for the ongoing bargaining has not been prepared. In fact, indirect deadlines (without describing them as such) have been set, the general exhortation, articulated by no less a personage than the WTO chief, Mr Pascal Lamy, himself, being that the pending work — before a ministerial meeting can be called to give the stamp of approval of the member-Governments to the actual outcome of the negotiations — will have to be completed "in a matter of weeks rather than months" (Lamy, April 24, 2006).

According to Mr Lamy, "What we need now is to review our flight plan: Maintain course, increase speed and start the final approach to modalities. From now on, the process to reach modalities will be continuous, Geneva-based, and focused on texts . . ."

He added: "we need to share a clear sense of the steps ahead, bearing in mind the very urgent need to move to a real text-based negotiation from the reference papers which have already been tabled on some elements of the agriculture negotiations. The production of these texts must be the immediate objective, and the sooner it can be done the greater will be our chances of success".

Mr Crawford Falconer has drawn an even clearer picture of what has to be done and, more importantly, during what period.

Admittedly, no `formal' deadline has been set but he has proposed that there should be continuous negotiations in three cycles of a fortnight each beginning from May 1, the basis for the discussions being the "reference papers".

According to one report, the New Zealand envoy "has indicated that in principle, these reference papers should form the basis for discussions among delegates, and eventually evolve into draft text. Reference papers will eventually be prepared on all topics under negotiation".

Structure of negotiations

The structure of the negotiations in particular has therefore been set and the unofficial schedule appears to be completion of the process by the middle of June.

If the process bears concrete fruit in the shape of agreement on texts (which can then be put before the Ministers), then it is clear that the July 31 `deadline' set by the Hong Kong ministerial could possibly be met. But this is only the structure of the negotiations. More important is the content, and here there is still a lot of uncertainty about the outcome.

In particular, on farm issues, the current state of play does not inspire any hopeful expectations about a favourable outcome.

In fact, there is at least one point of view which holds that the protagonists in the field have drifted further apart compared to their positions before the Hong Kong ministerial. And it is not only the developing economies that are at loggerheads with the rich.

According to one report, as late as in the middle of April, when the EU Trade Commissioner, Mr Peter Mandelson, "tried to argue that responsibility for the failure lay with the US for not moderating its demands on farm tariffs, a US Trade Representative spokesperson responded that the EU was putting more effort into finger-pointing than into the negotiations".

The outlook, therefore, is definitely bleak for the Doha Round. The question is: Is it equally bleak for the future of the WTO itself?