FRANCE: The subsidies may have been voted out, but the results may not be seen in French supermarkets for years, writes Denis McClean in Geneva.
Revolutionary, historic hmm.
Within a few hours of WTO members' acceptance of the Doha framework agreement, The Irish Times took a Sunday morning stroll down the aisles of an Intermarché supermarket across the border from Geneva in St Julien in France.
The idea was to see what the behemoth of EU agriculture is doing to welcome other nations onto its supermarket shelves.
It was immediately obvious why the president of the French farmers' union, Mr Jean-Michel Lematayer, responded to the urgings of the IFA president, Mr John Dillon, to join him in Geneva during the last week to bat for the farmers' lobby.
Like any other supermarket in France, this St Julien outlet is a shrine to French farming. The vegetable stalls were almost completely dominated by French produce, with carrots, cabbage, broccoli, potatoes and tomatoes priced respectively per kg at €1.35, €1.49, €1.99, €1.35 and €1.85.
The EU "rest of" presence in the vegetable hall consisted of an empty box of German rhubarb (€2.90 per kg) and some Dutch mushrooms (€4.35). On the fruit side, Spain was present with melons selling at €1.39 each and lemons at €1.79 for a bag of six.
From developing countries - struggling with the AIDS pandemic and deep-rooted poverty - one could find mangos from Senegal priced at €1.29 each, avocados from Kenya at €0.43 apiece, ginger from Brazil at €5.80 per kg, and some bruised apples and sweet potatoes from South Africa at €2.95 and €3.25 per kg.
When it came to what both France and Ireland deem sensitive products, such as beef and dairy products, the French agri-business machine really kicks in. The only "alien" meat on view was a selection of smoked sides of ham from Spain; the rest was "viande bovine Francaise" all the way down one line of freezers and up the other. Some sample prices were €4.59 for 356 grams of beefsteak and €1.85 for 284 grams of burger meat. Even the French canine population benefits from EU protection. That section of the freezer devoted to succulent bones for animals was clearly marked as French produce.
Only in the area of fish do the French appear to acknowledge the existence of Ireland, Scotland and Norway, and then solely on the basis of their salmon stocks.
And you will be looking a lot time for Stilton or Galtee cheddar among the excellent selection of French cheeses.
"Revolutionary" and "historic" were just some of the epithets used in the early hours yesterday by the 147 members of the World Trade Organisation relieved that the world's multi-lateral trading system was still intact and that the Doha trade round was out of intensive care.
"This is the beginning of the end of subsidies," said Brazilian Foreign Minister, Mr Celso Amorim. "It is a rare combination of social justice and trade coming together."
When they will come together on the supermarket shelves of Europe is an open question, but it will probably not be for some years, perhaps even as late as 2015, the deadline set by the UN for implementation of the Millennium Development Goals on halving world poverty.
Despite this reality, WTO officials chasten doubting reporters and truculent aid agencies with a reminder that the WTO and the multi-lateral trading system is the only game in town for developing and least developed countries. Otherwise they would be left to the not-so-tender mercies of "the big boys picking them off one by one", according to one member of the Irish WTO delegation.
The WTO Director General, Dr Supachai Panitchpakdi, hopes that this "truly historic" achievement, following the deadlock of the failed Cançun Ministerial Conference last September, will have laid the foundations for negotiations on further details to resume in September "with a high degree of enthusiasm".
The enthusiasm was not catching on as far as development agencies such as Oxfam International and Action Aid were concerned, however. Without having to conduct any surveys of French supermarket shelves, both condemned the agreement as a disappointing achievement, the result of negotiations carried out behind closed doors and intimidation of developing countries into accepting a deal - any deal - rather than be accused of derailing the whole process.
Oxfam attacked the agreement's flexibility on domestic support for certain products - in Ireland's case beef and dairy products - in developed countries: "Double standards abound as developing countries are asked to reduce the very small amount of domestic support they have while major loopholes are opened up for rich countries."
Oxfam also warned that developing countries might face "de-industrialisation as a result of the deep tariff cuts envisioned" under the component on non-agricultural market access.