EU businesses calls on WTO to speed up Doha talks

The European businesses, growing frustrated at slow progress in the World Trade Organisation's (WTO's) Doha round, called on Sunday for the WTO to speed up negotiations next week.

The WTO is holding a ministerial conference from Monday to Wednesday, but negotiations on Doha, launched eight years ago to open markets and help developing countries grow through trade, are off the agenda.                                           

Instead ministers will review the WTO's work and its contribution to economic recovery and tackling problems such as climate change.

Doha is likely to be discussed on the sidelines. Economists argue about precise benefits of a Doha deal but political leaders and the WTO believe it would boost business confidence by removing uncertainty from the world economy.                                           

"At some point of time all WTO members will have to make up their minds on the conclusion of the round," said Carsten Dannoehl, senior adviser for international relations at BusinessEurope, the EU business lobby.                                           

"What could be a better moment than a WTO ministerial meeting that gathers the whole membership?" he told Reuters.

BusinessEurope is expected to issue a call during the conference for the WTO's 153 members to focus on concluding a Doha deal, which would cut industrial and agricultural tariffs, slash farm subsidies and open up trade in services.                                          

WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy says a Doha agreement is 80% complete. But mindful of previous WTO conferences that broke up in acrimony, he wants to avoid submitting an incomplete proposal to ministers.                                          

"Of course there will be a discussion, but what there will not be is a ministerial decision on options, texts, which are on the table...  It simply is not ripe for this kind of thing," he told reporters on Thursday.                                           

Political leaders have called on WTO members to reach a Doha agreement in 2010, but Lamy has said negotiations will have to speed up to meet that new deadline. Members will take stock and decide whether 2010 is realistic early next year.

Poverty action group Oxfam said completing the Doha round would not solve all development challenges but would at least remove some of the worst trade distortions.

"The very fact that the Doha round is not even on the agenda of this week's ministerial shows that the round is moribund. Yet a strong and fair multilateral trading system is more needed than ever at a time when poor countries are being triply punished by the food, climate and economic crises," said Celine Charveriat of Oxfam International in a statement.                                           

Around 3,000 demonstrators protested in Geneva on Saturday at WTO policies that they say promote poverty, but the march was called off after some 200 protesters rampaged through the city centre smashing windows and setting fire to cars.