WTO talks will fail if rules are not reformed - Fischler

EU Agriculture Commissioner Mr Franz Fischler warned yesterday there was no point in restarting the current round of World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks without reforming the rules governing the body - which is still reeling from the collapse of a crucial WTO ministerial meeting last weekend.

"I believe that if we just try to relaunch the whole discussion without changing the structures and procedures, the risk of another failure is too high, and the last thing we need at this stage is another failure," Mr Fischler said. "We risk then that the WTO loses its position, and we risk then that nobody cares any more about implementing panel rulings."

Mr Fischler offered little hope of Brussels providing the political leadership needed to revive the stalled round, conceding that the EU had no strategy for putting the negotiations back on track. He also said it was too early to make concrete proposals for reforming the WTO, though the commissioner argued that redefining the relationship between the trade body's 148 members and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) would be a priority.

Mr Fischler argued that NGOs had been at least partly responsible for the breakdown of the ministerial meeting in Cancún. "I think it is absolutely necessary to find new forms of co-operation with NGOs," he said.

"NGOs can be very helpful, and some are very helpful, but some can give the process a totally wrong spin. This is what partly happened in Cancún."

He identified the waning enthusiasm for multilateral trade talks among many WTO members as another crucial factor in the Cancún debacle, claiming: "One of the biggest problems was that there were too many people around the table who were not interested in a successful round."

Mr Fischler insisted the EU would continue to support the multilateral process. The pursuit of bilateral or regional free trade accords, a policy popular among US policymakers, "could never be an alternative to the WTO or the multilateral process", he said.

Mr Fischler also attacked the group of 22 developing countries, including Brazil, India, China and South Africa, that had emerged as in Cancún, lobbying aggressively for the EU and the US to cut their trade barriers. He said the group had not been able to engage in "real negotiations" because their wide divergence of interests made it impossible for the group to agree to concessions.