|
A special report on the Doha Round issued last week by the law firm of White & Case reviews the latest developments in the Round and discusses the outlook for a successful conclusion to the negotiations. The report emphasizes the importance of the next few months, where there is a great deal left to be agreed with little time before the WTO Ministerial Meeting in Hong Kong in December. A failure there would jeopardize chances of finishing the Round by its 2006 deadline.
In meetings at the end of July, WTO members failed to reach agreement on ‘first approximations’ for services and other areas of the negotiations. WTO Director-General Supachai has been cautioning Members on their lack of progress and warns that the agriculture talks are holding all other areas “hostage” and leading the Round towards “a crisis of immobility” (See GSN Alert of August 4 at http://www.globalservicesnetwork.com/updates/update080405.htm).
If the Round fails, WTO members will increasingly turn to regional and bilateral trade agreements. Nevertheless, the report says, in over 50 years of the GATT/WTO, no round has yet failed, and the Uruguay Round was written off many times before producing the biggest of all post-war trade agreements. To read the full White & Case report, click here: http://www.globalservicesnetwork.com/W&C_WTOreport.doc.