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India may be isolated at Doha, warns EU

European Union on Saturday warned that India might be isolated at the WTO Ministerial Meeting in Doha next week if it continued opposing the launch of a new trade round.

A senior EU official said, "we have been receiving encouraging signals from both Malaysia and Pakistan, which were earlier opposing a comprehensive new round and it is our strong impression that India wants to play a constructive role."

The 15-nation EU along with United States strongly favoured the launch of a new comprehensive round of negotiations covering not only mandated 'agriculure' and 'services' but also investment and competition, and environmental issues.

India has demanded that implementation issues of the existing WTO (World Trade Organisation) agreements should be addressed upfront and strongly opposed inclusion of new issues like trade in investment and competition, besides environmental issues in the work programme of WTO.

EU official said developing countries had submitted about 100 odd requests dealing with implementation of the 1994 Marrakesh agreement of the GATT and United States and EU could take immediate action on at least 50 of them.

The main idea behind these 100 requests were to modify the existing rules or interpret them in ways more favourable to developing countries.

"We have implemented the Marrakesh agreement fully," EU official said, adding, "there has been no failure on our part here."

He said India, for instance, wanted its customs authorities to have the right to call on customs authorities of other countries to check fraud because of abnormally low prices.

This was a matter on which customs administrations in developed countries could decide for themselves, he said

The 50 odd requests which could not be implemented rightaway required changes to the WTO rules adopted in the Uruguay Round as well as amendments to national legislations.

Regarding the demand of the developing countries to raise the threshold limit of allowable subsidies, EU official said, "I am not saying we are against this but it would need modifications to both WTO agreement and national legislations."

On linking environment with trade, he maintained that there was need to update WTO rules for the protection of environment and public health.

On investment and competition, EU was willing to adopt 'two-speed approach' on which India had some difficulties, he said.

On core labour standards, EU official said, "we have never proposed minimum labour standards. What we want is an ongoing dialogue on trade and social development, broadly defined."

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