Chair Hopes for WTO Ag Talks Restart

Doha agriculture negotiations Chair Ambassador Alparslan Acarsoy of Türkiye is hoping to jumpstart stalled negotiations in agriculture later this month, following the failure to reach any agreement on agriculture at the just concluded World Trade Organization’s 13th ministerial conference in Abu Dhabi.

In an email sent to members, the chair said he is calling a Special Session of the Committee on Agriculture for April 16. “The main purpose of this meeting is to allow Members to take stock of the agriculture negotiations and deliberate on the way forward.” “In this context,” he said, “this meeting of the Special Session of the Committee on Agriculture will be considered as a joint meeting with the Dedicated Sessions on Public Stockholding for Food Security Purposes (PSH) and on the Special Safeguard Mechanism (SSM).”

However, the wounds from the failed MC13 on agriculture still seem raw and appear difficult to heal anytime soon. In addition, several important nations are going to the polls this year, where agriculture remains a major issue.

MC13 witnessed tense negotiations, amidst inflexible positions adopted by key members, particularly among the group of eight countries in the green room.

To expect that key members will change their oft-repeated concerns and positions may seem far-fetched now, a former trade envoy said.

In his report to the Doha Trade Negotiations Committee last month, Ambassador Acarsoy expressed disappointment over “the absence of outcome on agriculture at MC13.”

Following the advice from the TNC chair and WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the chair said “we should focus on the positives. In particular, Members succeeded in generating a text that was presented to Ministers as a basis for discussion.”

Citing the work done in the runup to MC13, the chair commended members by saying “we have done a lot of work and we have a basis on which we can build.”

He said “the key issues that need to be tackled are well known." However, he did not spell out what these key issues are and how they can be tackled.

“But we also need to reflect on causes of the persisting stalemate, with a view to finding the most efficient way to resume the negotiations without falling again in the same traps,” he emphasized.

He said members “may think that we have a lot of time, but we do not considering the nature of the issues that have to be resolved. I need not remind Members that the negotiations started in 2000.”

Instead of making general remarks, the chair should have thrown some light on the recurring stalemates from his vantage position in the negotiations as well as in the closed-door green room meetings, said people familiar with the negotiations.

Also, he ought to have spoken his mind on the status of mandated issues in the negotiations, as several countries reckon that mandates are dynamic and that goal posts can be shifted without prior consent, said people who asked not to be quoted.

In her interventions at the TNC meeting, as per the restricted Job/GC/390 document, the DG said she shared the sentiments and ideas expressed by the Agriculture chair.

Ms. Okonjo-Iweala said that “it was encouraging that for the first time in a very long time – despite Members' political sensitivities, you were working off a common text.”

Common texts were pursued after failed ministerial meetings in the past, but were unable to bring results.

The DG said, “While we fell short, we should keep our hopes up.”

“I think we came close to charting a course for reforming our agriculture rulebook,” she said, adding that “I hope ambassadors will work with Ambassador Acarsoy to chart a way forward.”

She reiterated the chair’s appeal “to you not to start from scratch but build on the work done thus far as captured in the Chair's State of Play document to set out a credible framework for these negotiations to produce results.”