WTO Ministers Say Complete Doha Round Or Suffer Irrelevance

World Trade Organization members today called for a completion of the Doha Development Round of trade liberalisation talks in 2010, tying its success to the relevance of the organisation as a whole, at the opening plenary session of this week’s WTO ministerial. Members also urged a stronger review mechanism, and the head of the World Intellectual Property Organization questioned the effectiveness of the multilateral system.

Deadlines set to finish the round have been missed again and again, said the trade minister of Hong Kong, adding the “credibility of this organisation, and the multilateral system, is at risk.… We cannot afford to miss this critical window again.” The Doha Round was launched in 2001.

Many other ministers speaking on the opening day of the 30 November to 1 December conference echoed these sentiments. Singapore said it is a “matter of WTO credibility to conclude the Round.” Mexico asked “is the WTO system and the [Dispute Settlement Mechanism] sufficiently agile enough to guarantee our producers that they will have fair play” when economic practices move faster than the policies and processes of the WTO, and called for an updated dispute settlement system to reflect new realities.

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And the following text has been proposed for inclusion in the chair’s summary of this ministerial meeting, currently supported by Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, European Union, Hong Kong, India, Jamaica, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Mauritius, Mexico, Norway, South Africa, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tanzania on behalf of the Least Developed Country Group, Turkey, the United States and Uruguay: