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Europe's farm chief has said the revised negotiating text on agriculture for a world trade deal lacks balance in core areas that prevents progress.
“I can see positive steps in the announcements for sensitive products ... but there are other areas where we are more disappointed,” EU Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel said at the start of an informal meeting of EU farm ministers.
“We want a reasonable balance ... and I do not exactly see just now the balance. Nothing is happening on agriculture unless we see it is possible to get a balanced deal,” she said.
The treatment of food products is one of the trickiest issues in the agriculture talks in the WTO's Doha Round. Countries, both rich and poor, can shield certain products from the full force of wider tariff cuts by declaring that they are politically sensitive.
Such products designated as sensitive receive smaller tariff cuts than other goods, but countries are required to compensate by expanding quota volumes for imports at a lower tariff, in what is known as a tariff-rate quota, or TRQ.
While this technical issue is complex, its outcome will determine potentially the biggest gains from the Doha Round in market access for food exporters like Australia and Uruguay. (Source: Reuters)
May 29, 2008
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