By Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, Dec 16 2003 (IPS)

In the fourth century before the Christian era, when the Western powers that dominate today were just beginning to form in Rome, the British monarchy dictated the “Molmutine” laws, which declared sacred the churches, the stone-paved roads – and the peasant farmers’ ploughs.

More than two millennia later, agriculture in Europe and in the United States appears to uphold a certain amount of this sanctity, the “holiness” established by the ancient rules named for Dunvallo Molmutius, enjoying immunity from the free trade doctrine that they are otherwise pushing through the globalisation process.

The European Union’s agricultural commissioner, Franz Fischler, of Germany, has just rejected the possibility of deeper reforms of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), the subsidies regimen that supports the “inefficient” farmers and exporters of the 15-member bloc.

The United States, which last week lifted the trade barriers it had imposed on steel imports, has left intact its farm law, a series of subsidies for farmers with some similarities to European farm sector protectionism.

The reluctance of the EU and the United States, and of Japan and other industrialised countries, to dismantle the mechanisms that channel an estimated billion dollars a day to the agricultural sector in the North threatens to undermine the entire multilateral trade liberalisation system constructed over recent decades.

Negotiations of the so-called Doha Round – launched by the ministerial conference of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in November 2001 in the Qatari capital – remain bogged down. Also known as the “Development Round”, farm trade liberalisation was one of its primary objectives.

Uruguayan trade diplomat Carlos Pérez del Castillo, this year’s chairman of the WTO General Council, says the 146 members of the multilateral system recognise the fact that positive results in farm talks would favour consensus on other trade matters.

After the Cancún fiasco, the trade delegations limited talks to a handful of strategic questions, including farm subsidies, industrial tariffs, cotton subsidies and what are known as the Singapore issues (investment rules, competition policies, transparency in government procurement and facilitation of trade through simpler customs rules).

Pérez del Castillo acknowledged this week that other Doha agenda items are pending that are closely related to development and are of particular interest to the countries of the South, such as the implementation of trade agreements made during the past negotiation rounds and special and differentiated treatment for poor nations.

But the farm question remains at the forefront, and the elimination of all export subsidies is essential, said the General Council chairman, who also calls for setting a timeline for achieving that objective.

The execution of such reforms must be spearheaded by the EU and United States and is crucial for reducing poverty, because three-quarters of the world’s poor rely on rural activity for their subsistence, according to Michael Bailey, policy adviser for the non-governmental humanitarian organisation, Oxfam International, based in Britain.

The farm subsidies issue will return next year in the WTO Committee on Agriculture. The member states agreed to renew the activities of theme-specific committees, which had been suspended after the Doha ministerial meet in 2001.

Also returning to action is the Trade Negotiations Committee, the body that oversees the global process of each WTO round of talks. Argentina’s chief negotiator Alfredo Chiaradia predicts that mechanism will be up and running in late February or March 2004.

The return of the negotiation groups could help bring the positions of the different parties closer together, says Brazilian representative Luiz de Seixas Correa, who coordinates in Geneva the actions of the Group of 20 (G20) developing countries that emerged prior to the Cancún meet as a counterweight to the alliance of the EU and United States on farm trade.

Seixas Correa is urging a more interactive negotiation process, one with fewer consultations and drafting of texts and greater emphasis on trade-offs, in the sense of “I’ll give you this if you give me that,” he said.

With respect to the Singapore issues, Pérez del Castillo proposed that negotiations should be limited to trade facilitation and transparency in government procurement, setting aside investment and competition talks for now.

But a group of 44 developing nations, among them the 29 categorised as least developed countries, issued an appeal this week for the elimination also of matters related to government procurement.

Another Britain-based non-governmental group, the World Development Movement, is pressing the EU to abandon the Singapore issues altogether.

Instead, the European bloc should present a new position that keeps its promises for a negotiation round that would benefit international development, says David Timms, spokesman for the group.

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