WTO Cancun Ministerial, September 2003

The Cancun ministerial conference collapsed on September 14th as Minister Derbez made the decision to halt the negotiations because of the absence of a consensus on the pending decision on the Singapore issues.
Preliminary Analysis
The following factors contributed to the failure of the mid-term review of the Doha Development round.
1- Overloaded agenda
This failure occurs after two years of missed deadlines and postponement of decisions leading to a clearly overloaded agenda. The lack of (...)

Daily update from Jo Leadbeater, European Health NGOs representative in Cancun.
Negotiations got underway today (10 September) at the WTO ministerial in Cancun, with agriculture continuing to dominate the official discussions and the buzz in the hallways.
The proposal by four West African countries (Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali and Chad) to eliminate US cotton subsidies continues to receive a lot of attention.
Cotton was discussed in the plenary with many developing countries expressing (...)

A joint NGO statement on TRIPS and public health, titled "A ’gift’ bound in red tape" (see attachment) has been issued by 14 NGOs.
The statement says that "as a measure of trade policy, [the WTO deal on medicines] contradicts the basic principles of the WTO and free trade."
It also includes an explanatory list of the main problems with the rules, and finally, two clear demands:
"We call upon the WTO member countries to draft an amendment to the TRIPS that simplifies and clarifies the (...)

Daily update from Jo Leadbeater, European Health NGOs representative in Cancun.
Agriculture
The focus of the summit is agriculture.
The G20 is a major new initiative of developing countries, and is creting a major stir.
They are demanding major reform and confronting the traditional negotiation system which has seen the EU and US proposals adopted with little revision.
This is a substantial confrontation. The US and EU are madly briefing that this is a short term tactical alliance (...)

Jo Leadbeater (Oxfam International) represents the health community as one of the NGO advisers to the EU Delegation at the WTO Ministerial meeting in Cancun, Mexico.
Read Jo’s daily reports from Cancun.

The European Farmers Coordination (CPE) has issued a press release (see attachment in French) criticising the EU position on agriculture issues.
THE CPE believes EU/US common position on agriculture damages farmers, both in the US and Europe, and in developing countries, benefiting only the agro-alimentary industry and the big distribution networks. In fact, the text received a cool response from other WTO members: click here for more details.
The CPE proposes non-EU country governments to (...)

The by Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) and BirdLife International have produced three papers (attached) for the forthcoming WTO Ministerial meeting in Cancun.
The first paper is an information paper on the relationship between the latest reform of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy and the proposed reform of the WTO’ s Agreement on Agriculture.
The second is a policy position paper on Agriculture and Trade.
The third is a media background briefing (...)

Europe’s chief trade negotiator Pascal Lamy will be online from 18:00 on Thursday 4th September to answer questions on the Cancun ministerial.
Click here for more infor on how to participate in the chat.

The European Commission has prepared an agriculture information pack for the upcoming WTO Ministerial meeting in Cancún, Mexico from 10 to 14 September 2003.
The information material contains facts and figures about the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and its history of reforms, the EU’s approach for Cancún, especially regarding developing countries and non-trade concerns and a glossary which helps to decipher WTO- and (...)