Archive - 2005

World Trade Organisation chief Pascal Lamy released his draft text on global trade talks for the WTO's keynote ministerial conference in Hong Kong next month, saying it was still open to change.

Director-General Pascal Lamy, at an informal meeting of heads of delegations on 26 November 2005, introduced the Draft Ministerial Text for the 6th Ministerial Conference

links to the ag and NAMA reports in track changes

The Chair of the services negotiations in the WTO, Ambassador Fernando de Mateo of Mexico, issued Wednesday evening his revised draft Ministerial text on services.

The Chair of the Services Negotiations was bluntly told by five ASEAN countries Thursday 24 Nov that his (second) revised draft Ministerial text on services did not 'enjoy consensus', and that Mateo's 'dismissal' of the views of the ASEAN did not 'fit together neatly with the claim in (the Chair's) cover note that the revised draft has been prepared on the basis of submissions by Members'.

links to two new G-33 proposals on Special Products and the Special Safeguard Mechanism

Agriculture is once again proving to be the determinant of results in the GATT/WTO negotiations. In December 1987, it caused the collapse of the Montreal Mid-term Review of the Uruguay Round negotiations. Then at the end of that round, the results could be consolidated only after the two major developed countries had an agreement in this area in what was called the Blair House accord.

The WTO's Hong Kong Ministerial Conference will be a negotiating meeting and not just a stock-taking exercise, the WTO Director- General Pascal Lamy said at the African Union Trade Ministers' conference

The European Union agreed on a major overhaul of its sugar subsidy program Thursday, cutting prices by 36 percent in a landmark deal that the EU said would strengthen its hand in upcoming world trade talks.

A grand global fight looms in Hong Kong in December