Today's Trade Negtotiating Committee Meeting

This week is all about resolving differences. To do this key Ministers drawn from the WTO membership - representing either major trading economies or particular interests (eg agriculture, cotton, bananas) are meeting to try and achieve a meeting of minds. But as the WTO operates on a consensus basis, all members must be involved and comfortable with outcomes. For this reason all members are meeting at head of delegation level every morning as the Trade Negotiating Committee.

As today was the first meeting many members wanted to speak. Not all managed to take the floor before the meeting was adjourned so tomorrow's meeting will see a continuation of today's process. All Ministers who asked to speak were able to speak today.

Process

DG Lamy's speech is available on the WTO website. He spoke mainly about process. He announced that the Trade Negotiations Committee will move from an informal process to a formal process on Saturday. This may be able to take decisions on the basis of this week's work. It would also receive reports from Chairs other than those of agriculture and non-agricultural market access (there is no guarantee that this meeting will end Saturday and many Ministers referred to the possibility of staying on until next week).

EU

Mandelson gave one of the strongest speeches. Probably as a result of two Ministers being there to lay out some strong markers on agriculture, and the GI issue. Many members noted his comment that the EU wants to see new market access on non-agricultural goods, and that "nothing else will do for the EU".

Brazil, Argentina and Indonesia

All mentioned that there is much more work to be done on agriculture and that it was a myth that the agriculture talks were largely agreed. They all said that there was an imbalance in the negotiations. On agriculture the major developed countries were being given exemptions at the cost of the developing members, while on NAMA, the burden was being placed on developing countries to give. Brazil and Indonesia suggested that a deal was possible but that this imbalance would need to be addressed. Argentina seemed to be rejecting the NAMA text saying that the text was not fit for the type of horizontal process that members were currently engaged in.

Venezuela

Argued that it was unhappy about the process, which it did not feel fully part of. It would participate, but reserved the right to withdraw.

G10 (the agriculture neanderthals)

They see unfinished business also in the agriculture text and have issued a communique outlining their concerns - we will track this down).

Jamaica

Was worried about the balance in the negotiations. More needed to be done for the developing countries.

Lesotho

On behalf of the least developed countries called for more progress on duty free and quota free access. It was looking to the developed countries and larger developing countries for action. It called for a solution on cotton this week.

Services

EU, Switzerland, Australia, Japan, Kenya, Venezuela and Korea all emphasised the importance of achieving outcomes on services. Why the US and some others did not mention this important area is a concern for some.