HONG KONG, Dec 16: The current log-jam in the Doha Round is being blamed on the European Union’s failure to match the level of tariff reduction the G20 has offered on agriculture, which is holding back other members from making concessions in other areas of the talks.

The EU has also been accused of attempting to shift the focus away from the core agenda of trade liberalization and playing divisive tactics of trying to break the unity of poor countries.

Other allegations were also levelled against the EU by some of the world’s leading NGOs. They believed that developing countries were justified in demanding their due share in the global trade as developed countries had so far failed to table proposals offering to deliver them a deal to correct the imbalances in the global system that are the legacy of the Uruguay Round.

The CUTS International, a leading research, advocacy and networking group working in Asia, Africa and Europe, said: “The costs of such a failure are potentially very huge as this could derail the process of global agricultural trade reform.”

It further felt that the situation would leave the issue of tariff peaks and escalations facing developing countries unresolved and result in increased mistrust in the global economy.

“Most notably the failure of the EU to reform its agricultural sector more significantly and the demands by developed countries for near reciprocity from larger developing economies such as Brazil and India in NAMA talks are quire unfair,” the CUTS observed.

With much of the focus being put on the development package and food aid, deliberations of the Hong Kong WTO Ministerial were so far not focussed on core issues of agriculture, non-agricultural market access(NAMA) and services where serious disagreements continued to exist among members.