November 11, 2003	Tuesday	Ramazan 15, 1424

BRUSSELS: A damning new report from environment charity WWF accuses the European commission of forging EU trade policy in a secretive and undemocratic way that frequently ignores the views of EU member states. The report — titled A League of Gentlemen — reinforces complaints aired by the UK Department of Trade (DTI) in a confidential post-mortem inquiry into September’s failed world trade talks in Cancun.

The WWF report goes further, levelling particular criticism at the so-called article 133 committee, a secretive and powerful EU body which steers trade policy and meets once a week in Brussels.

The committee comprises representatives from all 15 members, but WWF claims that the EC frequently succeeds in manipulating the meetings’ outcomes. Trade policy has become dominated by a small, unelected cadre of specialists, it alleges, and the commission often resorts to underhand methods to ensure that it gets its way.

One such method is to leak information to the press before meetings so that it is more difficult for the committee to change policies that have already been made public. Another is to present committee members with crucial documentation at the last minute, bouncing them into a decision.

“It is unclear where the status and power of this committee is defined,” says WWF’s Tom Crompton.

“It does not seem to operate in the way envisioned by European law [and yet] European trade policy has huge implications for people and the environment ... It is high time a bright light was shone into the murky world in which these decisions are taken.”

This month Pascal Lamy, Europe’s top trade negotiator, denied complaints that member states had been kept in the dark about EC negotiating tactics in Cancun. “I don’t think there was any problem [with communications],” he told journalists following the leak of the DTI paper. “I don’t think there was any sense that the EU system failed in Cancun.”

Controversially, WWF claims the commission has circulated policy papers at the WTO purporting to come from the EU — without consulting a single member state.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service