100 NGOs Demand EU Drop Trade Expansion Agenda

BRUSSELS, Belgium, November 7, 2003 (ENS) - The European Commission will persist in pressing the same issues that caused the World Trade Organization meeting in Cancun to founder earlier this year, a document leaked to Friends of the Earth Europe has revealed.

The European Commission internal strategy paper shows the EU proposes to negotiate the controversial Singapore issues of investment, competition, government procurement, and trade facilitation in the World Trade Organization (WTO) despite opposition from the majority of WTO members, especially developing countries.

"Including international investment and competition in the WTO would be a complete disaster for people and their environment, because it would remove governments' ability to control and direct economic development and environmental protection," said Alexandra Wandel, trade and sustainability programme co-ordinator at Friends of the Earth Europe.

In response to the strategy contained in the leaked document, more than 100 NGOs, including major environmental, development, human rights and farmer's organizations from across Europe, today issued an appeal to EU member states and the European Commission insisting that the Singapore issues must be dropped once and for all from the EU's WTO agenda.

The EU's insistence on including the Singapore issues in the latest round of trade negotiations was the immediate reason for the breakdown of the Cancun trade talks in September.

WTO Trade Negotiations Committee meets October 3, 2003 at WTO Headquarters in Geneva.(Photo by David Dunkley courtesy WTO)

WTO Director-General Supachai Panitchpakdi said immediately after Cancun that ministers could not agree on whether to launch negotiations on the so-called Singapore issues of trade and investment, trade and competition, transparency in government procurement and trade facilitation. "The level of political sensitivity varies widely on these issues, but members could not agree on any of them," he said.

The internal document, prepared by EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy's directorate, was discussed today in the European Union Trade Committee, which is made up of representatives from the 15 EU member states.

In the EU trade strategy paper, the Commission argues that the European Union could pursue negotiations on all of the four Singapore issues. The paper backtracks from the original offer of the European Commission in Cancun of dropping investment, competition and government procurement from the current WTO work program.

A sluggish performance in global trade and the prospects for weak trade expansion in 2003 reinforces the already pressing need for WTO member governments to get global trade negotiations back on track, said Director-General Panitchpakdi on Tuesday.

The strategy paper does not address alternative trade solutions outside the WTO, Wandel said, although governments have already agreed to further development of a binding corporate accountability legal framework in the United Nations. That agreement was made at the 2002 World Summit for Sustainable Development in Johannesburg.

EU trade ministers are expected to finalize their new position in a ministerial meeting on December 2 in time for the scheduled WTO General Council meeting in December.