An attempt by the European Union to expand the number of issues for which the WTO is responsible proved yesterday to be the biggest obstacle in the way of an agreement in Cancun.
The EU called for the WTO to start talks on creating international rules to cover investment, government procurement, trade facilitation and competition.
Developing countries rejected the move, arguing that adding new issues would overburden an already crowded WTO agenda, making it more difficult for poor countries to defend their interests in the organisation.
Mr Oisin Coghlan of Christian Aid Ireland said developing countries fear that any WTO action on the four proposed issues would leave indigenous businesses more exposed to competition from powerful, foreign companies.
"The mandate of the WTO is liberalisation. It's not to manage investment by regulating investment... It only goes in one direction and once you put in even a minimum commitment it never goes the other way," he said.
The EU argued that its companies needed an international framework to cover the four issues, known as the Singapore issues after the venue of the meeting where they were first raised.
Yesterday afternoon, the EU offered to reduce the issues to two - government procurement and trade facilitation. The EU believes that international rules on government procurement would reduce corruption in developing countries but poor countries claim that they would also prevent their governments from offering legitimate support to indigenous industries.
Trade facilitation involves easing the path of imports and exports by streamlining customs systems and reducing bureaucracy.
Although agriculture was the most contentious issue during most of the five-day meeting in Cancun, negotiators from developing countries and the developed world said privately yesterday they believed a draft document presented on Saturday provided the basis for a possible deal.
Poor countries criticised the draft as not going far enough in reducing tariffs on food imports in the developed world and abolishing EU and US export subsidies. Minister for Agriculture, Mr Walsh, said however that the draft contained a number of clauses that could cause problems for Ireland. Among them is a commitment to review the criteria for defining Green Box payments, which are supports to farmers that do not distort trade.
"In order to prepare for Cancun, the EU brought forward its mid-term review of the CAP and the vast bulk of support payments for farmers are now decoupled from production. In Ireland, they make up a very substantial part of farmers' incomes, in some cases farmers' entire profits. If the Green Box is to be reviewed, we would be very, very fearful that some time in the future, maybe in a few years, these decoupled payments would come under challenge and we don't want that," Mr Walsh said.
