[Ip-health] EU seeks to complete trade deals in two years

Sun Dec 3 10:12:04 2006

European Voice

Vol. 12 No. 44 : 30 November 2006

EU seeks to complete trade deals in two years

By Stewart Fleming

The European Commission hopes to complete bilateral trade agreements
with South Korea, India and ten south-east Asian countries within two
years at the latest, according to negotiating mandates for trade
agreements which it is expected to adopt on 6 December.

The mandates, which will have to be approved by the member states, have
been drawn up after extensive discussions with the countries involved.
Officials say that South Korea in particular is keen to reach agreement
quickly, hence the one-year timetable, while the negotiations with India
and ten members of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN)
are expected to take two years. India has signed up to this timetable,
an official said. The Commission fears that, without target dates for
completion, talks could meander on inconclusively as they did with the
proposed agreement with the four Latin American countries of the
Mercosur trade bloc.

A senior Commission official said that while bilateral trade agreements
in themselves were nothing new, the increased emphasis on bilateral
deals did reflect new EU priorities.

Previously the Commission had soft-pedalled on bilateral trade
agreements, fearing that pushing such deals might be interpreted as
undermining the now deadlocked Doha round of trade talks within the
World Trade Organization.

David O'Sullivan, Commission director-general for trade, warned recently
that, if Doha was not restarted within months, it might be a decade or
more before a new multilateral agreement could be reached.
Meanwhile bilateral deals are proliferating, not only between the US and
its trading partners but also among developing countries themselves. The
EU, said a senior official, could not afford to sit on the sidelines
while other countries gained competitive advantages from bilateral
deals, not least because this would tend to undermine support for free
trade within the EU.

A senior EU official said that the new bilateral deals should be seen as
part of the Lisbon Agenda, aimed at fostering EU competitiveness. The
world, he said, had changed dramatically since the Doha talks were
launched in 2001. Asian countries had emerged rapidly as key trade
partners and much of global business was now structured around
international supply chains. It was no accident that the new bilateral
negotiations were with Asian countries, he said.

Officials also pointed out that trade barriers increasingly took the
form of non-tariff barriers related to such issues as government
procurement policies and product regulations, and the need to ensure
fair competitive conditions and investment opportunities. Such issues
had either not been central to the Doha talks or were removed from the
Doha agenda early on.

# Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson will next week launch a review of
trade defence mechanisms such as anti-dumping duties and safeguard
clauses. In a green paper to be approved by the Commission on 6
December, Mandelson will ask member states whether the current rules
need changing to reflect that many European companies have outsourced
production to third countries and so suffer from penalty import duties.
The paper is designed to draw on the lessons of cases like the decision
to impose duties on imports of shoes from Asia which divided member
states. It will focus on the definitions of "community interest" and
"standing", or whether groups of companies are representative of the
industry as a whole.