Global Issue Paper No. 6
Options, views and perspectives from south and north
With Contributions From 9 Countries
Editor: Rainer Falk
Published by the Heinrich Böll Foundation, February 2004
From the Preface:
The abrupt end of the WTO Ministerial Conference in Cancún surprised a lot of people. Reactions varied greatly. NGOs and representatives of social movements in the North and South see the failure as a success. Government representatives, especially from industrial countries, saw it as a wasted opportunity for the expansion of free trade. Yet the collapse of the Cancún negotiations is an unmistakable sign that there are conflicts, contradictions and imbalances within the international trade regime. Its most important organization, the WTO, is experiencing a real crisis. The current system of world trade is in need of radical reform. The people who do not understand this signal from Cancún are responsible for economic, social and political injustice and block formation, and for increasing rather than decreasing protectionism.
The resumption of the negotiations in mid-December 2003 in Geneva, however, did not indicate a move towards serious reforms. But business as usual will not be enough to overcome the WTO crisis. The various trade blocks have become even more wary of each other. The EU and the USA are gradually familiarizing themselves with the new post-Cancún realities and have indicated that they can do without the inclusion of the Singapore topics (investments, competition, public procurement), if liberalization progresses in other areas (agriculture, goods and services). But a far reaching reform entails genuine concessions on the part of industrial countries, above all a decrease in subsidies and better market access for products from the South. In addition, procedural problems must be solved, including the lack of transparency and the imbalance of power in the decision-making structures. And finally, the industrial nations must act on the justified
demands of the developing countries who have been fighting for more room for maneuver and special and differential treatment for their economies beyond the tight corset of one size fits all.