The new proposal on agriculture negotiations to the WTO by both the EU and the Caribbean and Latin America in the December 15, 2009 The proposal comes in the wake of Agreement on Trade in Bananas reached on December tariffs on bananas, which would end long-standing disputes between exporters of tropical agricultural products.
Where the Group has announced the Caribbean and the Pacific ACP and Latin American countries and the European Union to reach the first two agreements concerning the treatment of tropical commodities and the erosion of preferential margins, one of the topics the course of negotiating the controversial and much debate among Member States of the Organization to the extent that it threatens the collapse of the Doha Round of negotiations unless there is a solution to this dispute.
The text of the agreement of tropical commodities, the amendment to paragraph 147 and paragraph 148 of the paper forms issued by the negotiating of the President of the negotiating group on agriculture and in December of 2008 to replace two more of those paragraphs two paragraphs as set out by agreement, a first paragraph 147, dealing with goods that will be treated tropical commodities and paragraph 148, relating to the treatment of such goods, which stipulates that the tropical list of goods will be subjected to two levels of reduction ,the first is for the goods that have tariff levels less than or equal to 20% so that tariffs on these goods will be eliminated. And for the goods with tariff levels greater than 20 % will be subjected to a reduction of 80%. The preference erosion agreement amends paragraph 149 in the draft modalities issued by the chair of the Agriculture Negotiating Group on December ,2008 to replace the paragraph with a new one as stated in the agreement stating that each of the United and the European Union will exclude those goods from reduction for a period of two years as set out the in reduction formula stated in the draft modalities set in December 2008.
Brazil, India, Australia and China have no objection to the proposal when it appeared that the sugar will only be included in the treatment of sensitive products, however, those nations are expected to raise objections in case goods of export interest are added to that .
The definition of tropical products and their treatment stated in the proposal has irritated some members such as India and Pakistan, as a result of the differences in views on the draft modalities since December 2008.
Based on above mentioned proposal, tropical goods will be selected from the draft modalities lists, and 65% of those products will be selected at least from the menu, and as for products that do not have a bound tariff attached, will be confined within the minimum number.
Some countries see that this proposal is considered to be a slight liberalization after years of disagreement in the negotiations especially among developing countries, where the new paragraphs will remove parts of the previous text, which gives priority or precedence to products that separate the list of tropical goods from sensitive ones in the sense that goods that are classified as tropical commodities can not be considered sensitive goods.
But exporters fear that the choice of tropical products will be opened for countries which may allow them choose those whose tariff lines have a small portion of trade and thus avoid opening their markets as much as possible.
Some members highlighted the non-tariff barriers, as this subject sent him prevents the access of developing countries to foreign markets.
Finally, many members stressed the importance of the existence of such a proposal, stating that the best way in the coming period is to move forward even if the negotiating position is unacceptable, where the proposal represents a balance between the parties, he added one charts when you talk to reach a compromise that the proposal takes the form of " plurilateral "when it is necessary to be" multilateral ".
