The World Trade Organisation (WTO) is made up of 149 member nations, and as representatives of each gathered today for the opening ceremony, thousands of anti-globalisation protestors unveiled huge banners as part of their protest.
The banners read “No Deal is Better than a Bad Deal” in various different languages, and reveal the lack of optimism amongst the general public that a new global trade justice deal will be achieved by the WTO talks.
Amongst the protestors were many South Korean farmers, who protested loudly and a number even jumped into Hong Kong harbour in attempts to swim across to the conference centre.
The WTO nevertheless continued with their meetings as scheduled in the hope that an agreement could be reached that would enable the world’s poorer nations the chance to make a greater impact in the world’s richer markets.The largest hurdle remains to be the extent as to which richer nations are to reduce their subsidies for their own farmers, and to remove import tariffs for overseas producers. A large cry has come about internationally for these subsidies to be cut as they mean that poorer nations are unable to compete against the lower prices, subsidised goods.
The European Union has been at the centre of much of the controversy, and has received a large amount of pressure to instigate major changes after the US and Australia stated that the EU has not been prepared to make enough concessions on agriculture, state the BBC.
The US has offered significant changes to its current trading system, however, the EU has been unable to come to a similar agreement so far, and has stated that it wants concessions also from poorer nations.
The EU Trade Commissioner, Peter Mandelson told the BBC’s Today Programme that he was only expecting limited progress to be made in the WTO meeting in Hong Kong.
He stated, “We're not going to do what we initially hoped we do at Hong Kong but nor need it be a disaster. What I want to do is to make sure that we make valuable progress by agreeing the structure for the negotiations right across the board, not just in agriculture but in all the areas.“[We need to then] intensify those negotiations in the early part of 2006 and then reach the grand bargain that we need to aim for.”
However, the American trade representative, Rob Portman made a call to the EU to hastily make further progress on agricultural subsidies. He said, “We need to use our time here very productively. We've been at this for four years.”
He concluded, “It's time to make the tough decisions.”
The WTO talks will last for six days until Dec. 18, 2005.
