Meeting between U.S. NGOs and Pascal Lamy on June 26, 2003

Some of the groups present: National Wildlife Federation, OXFAM U.S., FoE, WWF, Consumers Choice Council, Sierra Club, AFL-CIO, CIEL, Humane Society, Bread for the World, Public Citizen.

The meeting lasted for about one hour and was basically a question & answer session.

Trade and Environment - what is the status of these talks and how will this play in Doha:

The EU wanted this to be part of the Round and succeeded to get it on. In the short-term they have gotten it where they want it - to observe the relationship between WTO and MEAs. There has been some good progress to ensure compatability and to make sure trade rules don't trump environmental laws. Not much will happen by Cancun other than stocktaking. Ecolabels should be within the WTO rules (TBT), but this will probably be decided after, not before Cancun. While environment won't be among the headlines for Cancun, but will be dealt with eventually as it is part of the single undertaking and there is 'no way' the EU would accept a package that does not include environment.

Labor - what is happening with this?

This is a different situation than environment. The EU had wanted it included in Doha, but lost on this to the U.S. Administration and developing countries. This will not be on the agenda for Cancun. It is a dead issue in the Doha-round, since nothing can be added or removed from the single underatking, but it is not dead for the EU. They are pursuing core labor standards in bilateral and regional trade policiues (like COTONOU), and they are working with the ILO and the Confederation of European Unions. Hopefully the next time it can be brought up to the WTO, there will be more countries supporting it, rather than opposing including it. The one difference is in the textile sector, since at the end of 2004 there will be a totally new picture in trade in textiles. Even countries like Malaysia, Indonesia and India are willing to discuss labor standards in this context since this deals directly with China and not just a general discussion on labor standards.

Investment

He has a mandate from the Commission and the Parliament to set basic rules for transparency and predictability. He believes that the existence of such rules will be conducive to attracting FDI to countries (even though he acknowledged that there is no evidence for this, and that he based this more on his background as a banker where this seemed to matter to him and the bank he worked for). WTO rules would serve as a threshold for BITs. He felt that there seemed to be more developing countries in favor of investment rules than against. The agreement would be nothing like the MAI or NAFTA, but more of a GATS style approach, with a basic set of principles, preserving policy space with a bottom-up approach. They are still debating whether they will consider investor obligations. When asked about the UK being less enthusastic on investment he just re-iterated that he is fulfilling his mandate and that he does not have a sense that this is less of a priortity for any of the member countries.

TRIPS -

in response to an assertion by Oxfam that the U.S. is changing its position vis-a-vis the December 16 text and is now talking about accepting a broader list to define the scope of diseases...Lamy stated that this assertion seemed to be a little too optimistic interpretation and the U.S. pharma industry which he met with yesterday do not seem to be on this line. For the EU: not wise to renegotiate the December 16 text, and the EU will not accept any changes to the agreement that all countries but the U.S. were prepared to accept.

GMOs

This is not a Cancun related topic. He did stress that he found the argument that GMOs would feed the world extremely cyncial and unaccetable, and that it is not an argument that is moving to Europeans in any way. He basically stated that Europeans know it a spurious argument.

Process

There was agreement in Egypt that Cancun would focus on six major issues: market access and ag modalities, industrial tariffs, access to medicines, Singapore issues, implementation. There would have to be 100% agreement on the access to meds. issues, and if they could reach 60-70% agreement on the other issues they were on good grounds to complete the Round by 2005. He dodged the question about the LMG paper on process and did not answer this at all.

Agriculture (question regarding hunger and ag policy)

He said that main problem for developing countries where there are serious hunger issues is not so much that they don't have market access, but that products are being dumped on this. He mentioned that the EU created the 'food security box' (by which he meant development box?) He stated that Brazil, China, Indonesia and India, who are fighting for export markets, are in a different position than LDC's. He also stated that since the U.S. grows GM crops, they are pushing them globally in terms of food aid. He also stated that the EU is providing duty free access to 50% of the LDC's in sugar and bananas until 'o8.

Question regarding if Lamy could give us a sense of US priorities: Lamy stated that the U.S. is concerned with 1) market access 2) market access, and 3) market access.

He said that the challenge is always going to be to balance the quest for market access with trade rules. He stated that the EU supports the multilateral trading system as a proirity, but is also supporiting bilateral 'WTO-plus' agreements. He pointed to the EU and Chile as one that included things like labor standards and other positive issues.

He stated that the U.S. in linking HIV-AIDS relief to food aid, and that those kind of 'command chain' linkages don't work in Europe (e.g. linking defense policy to food aid.

Relationship with the NGO community. He said he met with NGO's in Brazil and India, and that he realized he should also meet with the U.S. He said that we could contact his staff with any questions or concerns. The staff contact there was Matthew Baldwin. e-mail: matthew.baldwin@cec.eu.int