European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso expressed concern today at the slow speed of global free trade talks and urged major developing countries to make concessions in areas such as services.
"I will not hide that the European Union is concerned about the pace of the Doha Development Agenda negotiations," he said, referring to the World Trade Organisation's (WTO) trade round.
In a speech to the 148-member state WTO, Mr Barroso said that the EU had helped push forward the negotiations on agriculture by offering to eliminate farm export subsidies.
But although agriculture was crucial to the success of the Doha trade round, progress must also come in other areas, notably in services and trade in industrial and consumer goods.
And it was here that major developing countries, allied in the Brazilian-led G20 group, needed to match the EU's farm offer with similarly ambitious proposals, he said. "Agriculture is only part of the agenda," said Mr Barroso. "We all have to give in order also to take," he said.
"In particular, the developing countries of the G20 need to match our ambition by putting forward equally ambitious offers for industrial and services market access," he added.
After nearly collapsing in 2003, the trade round got back on track last July, thanks in large part to the EU offer on export subsidies.
Their elimination is a key demand of developing states, which say the subsidies deny them fair access to world markets.
But since then there has been little progress in any area of the WTO talks, and negotiators are struggling to meet an end-July deadline for some outline accords.
Without a blueprint in July, trade ministers will not be in a position to settle the final details of the round at their next meeting in Hong Kong in December to ensure that it can be completed, as now planned, in 2006.
In agriculture, the trade talks are being blocked by differences between farm goods importers, such as the EU, Switzerland and Japan, and exporters on tariff cuts.
On industrial goods, rich states have reacted coolly to a proposal by Brazil and India on how far developing nations should lower barriers, saying that it would not lead to any significant increase in business for their companies.