EU under fire as WTO powers meet in Rio
Heavyweight trading powers were due to meet here in a bid to unblock the WTO's troubled drive to liberalise global commerce before an April deadline.
The US and EU trade chiefs were to meet Friday with World Trade Organisation head Pascal Lamy and Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim at a hotel overlooking Rio's fabled Copacabana beach.
The major players are not making any grandiose claims for what the two-day meeting can achieve, with the European Union still reluctant to meet a chorus of demands to relax its farm trade.
But all sides know that something has to give if the WTO is to achieve its goal of establishing the broad outlines of a deal on its "Doha Round" by the target date of April 30.
On the eve of the Rio meeting, Brazil, India and South Africa turned up the heat on Europe by lashing out at new EU rules on chemicals that they complained would be "devastating" for developing nations' exports.
The EU plan for the registration, evaluation and authorisation of chemicals (REACH) is expected to come into force next year, after it was adopted by the bloc's member states in December in the teeth of industry opposition.
South African Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said the directive would require poorer countries to register about 30,000 chemicals at a cost of more than 10 billion dollars to keep their raw materials flowing to Europe.
"If REACH were to be implemented in its current form, it would wreak havoc and stunt the development of our economies," she told a trilateral meeting here Thursday with her Brazilian and Indian counterparts.
The impact on minerals, ores, chemicals, textiles and metals would be "enormous and devastating", Dlamini-Zuma said. In a joint communique, the three ministers urged the EU to reconsider the "grave consequences" of REACH.
The three major developing economies also welcomed preliminary discussions on a prospective free trade bloc between South America, southern Africa and India.
The United States has already clinched a series of such regional trade arrangements, while denying it is any less committed to an overarching deal at the WTO.
The 149 WTO members have already missed a series of deadlines to wrap up the Doha negotiations launched in the Qatari capital in 2001.
Developing countries led by big emerging markets such as Brazil and India insist the rich world, notably the EU, must move first by dismantling generous agricultural subsidies.
EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson, backed to an extent by US Trade Representative Rob Portman, retorts that developing nations must in return grant much greater access to industrial imports and service industries.
On a visit to Buenos Aires Wednesday, Mandelson said the Rio meeting was not aimed at clinching any breakthroughs.
Rather, he said, it "will be an opportunity to understand the differences that exist among the key players to see how we could narrow the gap between us".
The WTO's overall aim is to achieve a comprehensive agreement by the end of this year.
That is one deadline that really cannot be missed, given that in the middle of next year, the US Congress will regain the right to pick apart any trade accord negotiated by the administration.
For his part, Portman hopes the Rio talks can "move closer to establishing a framework in advance of the upcoming (April) deadline," the US trade chief's spokeswoman Christin Baker told AFP.
"Broadly, he is concerned with the lack of urgency by some as April 30 rapidly approaches," she added.
AFP
