The Hindu : India, E.U. for resumption of WTO talks

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jan 20, 2004

Business

Business

India, E.U. for resumption of WTO talks

By Sushma Ramachandran

NEW DELHI, JAN. 19. India and the European Union today signalled their eagerness to restart the stalled round of negotiations under the Doha Development Round of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The visiting E.U. Trade Commissioner, Pascal Lamy, said that he had "flexibility" to negotiate on sensitive issues like agriculture, market access and industrial tariffs, while the Commerce Minister, Arun Jaitley, gave an assurance that the coming elections should neither slow down the pace of talks or affect the Indian position. Both were confident that 2004 would not be allowed to become a "lost year" for the Doha round, despite elections in many countries including the U.S.

Mr. Lamy who met businessmen and members of the parliamentary committee on trade during his day-long visit, said the E.U. was prepared to negotiate on the critical areas of trade-distorting subsidies but warned that the other major player was the U.S. Based on wide-ranging talks with Mr. Jaitley, he felt there was not much difficulty in reaching a common position with India but the problem was due to the other major players.

At a press conference, he said the E.U. had earlier dropped the four Singapore issues from the negotiations at Cancun but would now seek to include two of these issues, trade facilitation and transparency in Government procurement, in the resumed talks at Geneva. He appreciated that there was considerable opposition to the other two Singapore issues of investment and competition so these would not be included in the Doha agenda, at least for the time being.

Mr. Lamy said the issue of "core labour standards" may be revived by the E.U. to be included in talks on the textile sector. The mention of the labour standards came as a surprise to long time observers of the WTO talks, since its inclusion on the agenda has been vehemently opposed by the developing countries and has not even been mentioned by the developed countries for the past few years.

He claimed that the E.U. was "under pressure" from trade unions to ensure that opening of trade does not impinge on core labour standards. "This issue was thrown out earlier but I am sure it will enter through another window", he said.

On the outsourcing debate, he said "there is no obstacle from the E.U". India should improve its own offer in the services negotiations to show that its own market does not remain closed in telecom, legal services or accountancy.

He said that the E.U. was "disappointed" with the Indian offer on services but had been assured by Mr. Jaitley that this was only an initial offer and others would follow.

Speaking at a meeting of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), he said the E.U. has tabled a proposal which would slash import tariffs by over a third, make export subsidies zero on products of interest for developing countries and reduce trade distorting farm support by over 50 per cent.

He also suggested that the larger countries in the G-20 such as India, China, Brazil and South Africa might consider opening up more for the least developed countries (LDCs).

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