The Fate of Doha Development Agenda
Background
The fourth WTO Ministerial Meeting, which was held in Doha (Qatar) in November 2001, agreed on the next round of comprehensive Multilateral Trade Negotiations (MTNs) to be concluded by December, 2004. The Negotiations covered wide-ranging areas such as liberalization of trade in agricultural and non-agricultural products and services, trade related intellectual property rights, trade and environment, trade facilitation, dispute settlement, special and differential treatment to developing countries, and aid for trade. Since the focus of the Negotiations was on development, these are also referred as Doha Development Agenda.
The decision on the new Round was widely hailed as it came at a critical time. The world was under the shock of attack on World Trade Centre on 11 September 2001 and needed confidence-building initiatives. The Talks were expected to help in the recovery of the global economy from prevailing recession also. Being first under WTO and being agreed after the failure of earlier attempts at the Ministerial Meeting held in Seattle in September 1999, the Talks were of special significance.
As the Agenda covered a wide range of subjects (21), elaborate machinery was set up to undertake the negotiations; it included the newly created Trade Negotiations Committee, special sessions of existing sector committees (like Committee on Agriculture and Committee on Trade in Services) and a number of negotiation groups. The process of establishing negotiating machinery and institutions, identifying and clarifying issues, and outlining modalities of negotiations took almost two years. During this period sensitive issues such as market access in agricultural and non-agricultural products and additional commitments on services trade, surfaced. Consequently, the next Ministerial Meeting held in Cancun (Mexico) in September 2003 that was expected to review the progress and take steps to accelerate the negotiations process, turned into an arena of conflict and confrontation.
The main issue of conflict was export subsidies and domestic support measures on agriculture by USA, European Union and other advanced countries. The developing countries insisted on substantial reduction and elimination of these measures and ensuring greater market access to them in return for non-agriculture market access in their countries. The advanced countries, in particular the USA, were not willing to accede to the demand; this led to open confrontation between the USA and European Union on the one side and India, China and Brazil on the other. The little progress made in other areas was over-shadowed by this conflict. Consequently, the Ministerial Meeting ended in confusion, even without a usual report with the Chairperson and the Director General WTO making short statements indicating its failure.
With cooling down of emotions, serious and intensive informal discussions amongst the Members were initiated with active involvement of the main actors in the conflict in the first half of 2004. These discussions paved the way for the WTO General Council in July-August 2004 to adopt a number of measures for advancing negotiations. These included (a) framework agreements for negotiations in agriculture, non-agricultural products and services, (b) reiteration of the needs of developing and least developed countries (i.e., special and differential treatment, technical assistance, capacity building, food security, livelihood security and rural development); and (c) special safeguard mechanism for developing countries. The process was brought a step forward at the next Ministerial Meeting in Hong Kong in December 2005 which set a timeframe of April/July 2006 for finalization of negotiation modalities, resolved to eliminate export subsidies on agricultural products by 2013 and arrived at understanding to complete the Negotiations by the end of 2006.
The target period of April/July passed without any progress. Elements of conflict re-emerged and the situation became so tense that in July the negotiations had to be suspended to save it from complete collapse. The informal consultation mechanism was once again resorted to in which the leading players from both sides took active part. These also failed as disagreement on reduction of domestic support measures on agricultural products (in particular in USA); Special Safeguard Mechanism in agriculture for developing countries, and market access in non-agricultural products persisted. In an informal mini-ministerial meeting in July 2008, the United States made offers on domestic support measures in return for concessions in non-agricultural market access, which were not acceptable to India, China, and other developing countries; even the European Union opposed it. Informal discussions and debates continue with out any tangible progress.
In order to break the deadlock, the Director General in May 2011 suggested ‘Three-Speed Search for Doha Outcome’ delinking the development issues concerning developing countries, on which decisions could be taken early, from controversial issues of agriculture and market access. The response of members was not encouraging. The issue became so sensitive that the last Ministerial Meeting held in December, 2011 confined itself to focus on regular and routine work of WTO, including induction of Russia, Samoa and Montenegro as new members raising the number to156. However a session of the Meeting was devoted to general discussions on Doha Talks and the ‘Political Guidance’ issued reaffirming Members commitment to the Talks.