Cancún and beyond - A European Perspective of Agricultural Issues

Abstract

The Fifth WTO Ministerial Conference has taken place in Cancún, Mexico, from 10 to 14 September 2003.¹ In WTO’s own wording the primary objective of this meeting was ‘to take stock of progress in negotiations and other work under the Doha Development Agenda’. On Sunday, 14 September, the meeting ended without consensus on any of the items on the agenda.² In agriculture, despite some progress made, WTO Members were unable to adopt an already downsized modalities ‘framework’.³ No doubt, this meeting was a clear failure with respect to the objective of pushing forward the current Doha Round of trade negotiations, and thus ‘the second black eye for the WTO in four years’.⁴

The previous four WTO Ministerial Conferences took place in Singapore (1996), Geneva (1998), Seattle (1999) and Doha (2001).

With negotiations still in progress, and some narrowing of the gap between the positions of countries apparent, the Mexican Chairman, Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez, closed the conference abruptly, by announcing that despite considerable movement in consultations ‘the conference was at an end’ when no deal could be struck on the Singapore issues. The official ministerial statement can be found on the WTO’s website (http://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/minist_e/min03_e/min03_14sept_e.htm).

According to paragraph 14 of the Doha Declaration, Members were required to establish modalities by 31 March 2003. After missing this March deadline on agricultural modalities, chances were considered to be quite low that full agricultural modalities could be agreed in the Cancún Ministerial Conference. So, as a less ambitious alternative, negotiators tried to achieve at least a ‘framework’ for those modalities.

Schott (2003), 2. While until the ‘fist black eye’, the disaster of the Seattle Ministerial of 1999, the WTO looked unstoppable, since then a continuous downsizing of expectations is recognized (Josling (2001)).