European Commission's post-Cancun offering1 November 2003
On 26 November the European Commission (EC) released a document setting out its post Cancun trade position, and proposals for how world trade talks could be revived after negotiations collapsed at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) meeting in September.
While claiming a new stance following a two month "period of reflection", the document in fact offers little that is new or helpful.
It offers to remove the new issues;
- Investment
- Competition
- Trade facilitation
- Government procurement
from the WTO "single undertaking" - meaning talks in all areas have to be agreed or rejected together - and proposes discussions are continued in another way.
Eve Mitchell, Friends of the Earth Corporate Globalisation Campaigner, said:
Friends of the Earth believes this "unbundling" by the EC is not good enough. All new issues should be dropped from the WTO agenda because developing countries are already struggling to keep up with the current WTO workload.
The UK government has relaxed its own position on the new issues by saying that two of them - investment and competition - should be abandoned.
Thanks to all those of you who took action on new issues by emailing Patricia Hewitt.
