IRELAND WILL still be able to veto future World Trade Organisation agreements, the European Commission has said, as it presented a detailed reply to charges made by Lisbon Treaty opponents.
“It is certain that the Doha world trade deal will need unanimous approval by the member states. This is true now and will not be changed by the Lisbon Treaty,” the European Commission said in a statement yesterday.
Under existing EU treaties, and under Lisbon, world trade talks dealing only with goods, but not including agriculture or services, are dealt with by qualified majority voting. “Lisbon brings no change here. In practice, however, trade deals contain elements which require unanimity. A dissenting member state thus has a veto over the conclusion of important international trade agreements, such as the WTO Doha negotiations.”
The European Union operates, it said, by the so-called “Pastis Principle”, whereby an entire deal can be vetoed if any single part of it can be vetoed: “A deal like that envisaged in the Doha negotiations will always be affected in this way.
“The need for unanimity can be triggered for a number of reasons. A trade deal is currently only subject to unanimity where it touches on certain services or intellectual property sectors, or on issues that are beyond the exclusive competence such as investment or transport.”
The Eurovision Commission added that any trade deal “is also subject to unanimity in a range of areas where the treaty explicitly identifies EU sensitivities such as health, education and cultural services”, quoting a series of existing treaty clauses to back up its case.
The Lisbon Treaty “would remove some of these exceptions”, it acknowledged, in a move to make the EU’s common commercial policy more “coherent and homogeneous”, but unanimity would be required for certain key sectors. These cover cultural and audiovisual matters, and social, education and health services, the enforcement of intellectual property rights and investment in certain circumstances, said the commission’s Dublin office.
In addition, there are other issues affected by trade talks, where control is shared by the EU and the member states, such as transport services and policing and judicial questions surrounding intellectual property.
“For those matters, normally the competence is shared between the EU and its member states, and that means that international agreements have to be concluded by the EU and each individual member state,” it said.
It went on: “In reality, all important EU trade deals will include clauses on some or all of: transport services, intellectual property and investment. [The WTO] Doha [agreement] will certainly do so, as will all of the current EU free trade agreements. For this reason, they will have to be approved in their final form by unanimity.”