BRUSSELS, Oct 22: The campaign by France against EU tactics in WTO talks highlights the possible role of a French veto within the EU but its legal grounds seem weak.
France is also maneouvering to try to win allies within the 25-nation European Union and to avoid repeating previous experiences of becoming isolated, experts say.
France has sent a clear warning to EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson not to take any initiatives in negotiations in Geneva to prepare a framework for a global trade liberalization accord.
The World Trade Organization hopes to reach broad agreement on the deal at a December ministerial meeting in Hong Kong.
The central obstacle concerns agriculture and farm policies in the United States and European Union. The key problems are by how much should they relax subsidies and other support, such as protective customs duties, for farmers.
Commenting on warnings by France intended to limit any concessions by Mandelson, an EU source who declined to be named, said: “The French in the Chinese textile affair saw that they could put together a blocking minority within the European council of ministers but that it had to be done very early, given the defections that occur as events unfold.”
This was a reference to a successful campaign by some EU countries, including France, for the EU to limit imports of cheap textiles from China.
The experience explains why the French acted quickly when the focus in WTO negotiations on agriculture, part of the Doha Round of talks launched in the Qatari capital in late 2001, shifted to discussion of specific trade-opening offers.
The offers were designed to fulfill provisions of an outline agreement reached in Geneva in July 2004. That accord had obliged France, finding itself isolated within the 25-member European Union, to go along with a decision by the EU to eliminate subsidies for exports of agricultural products.
Among 14 EU members to sign a letter earlier this month warning the commission not to breach certain “red lines” in WTO agriculture talks were Italy and Spain.
France had earlier joined forces with them in the textile campaign, even though its direct interest in the Chinese textile matter was weak, according to French diplomats.
If France were now able to put together a blocking minority on agriculture negotiations at the WTO, it would amount to a “major change”, according to the EU source, but its ultimate impact remains uncertain.
At a foreign ministers meeting in Luxembourg on October 18, followed by a gathering the next day in Geneva at expert level, about half a dozen countries, according to EU sources, were prepared to adhere to a radical French initiative that would have restricted the commission’s negotiating mandate on agriculture.
But France is above all looking ahead to the Hong Kong WTO ministerial meeting, where Mandelson will be able to count on the British EU presidency. Britain has made no secret of its hostility to the EU’s Common Agriculture Policy.
That is why France has not ruled out relying on legal arguments in Hong Kong.
The approach would see France brandishing the possible use of a veto within the EU council of ministers, which would mean that any decision taken there on the Doha negotiations would require the unanimous backing of all 25 EU countries.
The practice is for decisions to be taken by consensus, recalled a French diplomatic source.
But if there is to be a vote, it would have to be unanimous, the source added.
Everything would depend on the presence, or absence, in the Doha talks of certain areas of “shared competence”, where authority is shared between the EU executive commission and the member states.
The commission argues that such a situation no longer applies, since such areas are not up for discussion.
But according to a French source, there is “residual shared competence”, for example in transportation services.
What remains to be determined, however, is whether France would be able to brandish the possibility of a veto on so marginal an issue in an overall trade package that has the backing of a large majority of EU members.—AFP