Development it is more than trade policy

How you analyze the failure of the negotiations on the Doha round to which we are witnessing

The launch of this cycle was decided 10 years ago, at the end of the Round Uruguay, then the spirits were probably not ripe for a new trade liberalization. In addition, the history of this cycle, said "development round", has always been an extraordinary ambiguity. Development, it is more than trade policy. Everyone has been hypocritical and door for the current failure. These negotiations always resemble part of bluff where everyone grows one at the extreme end before realize that he is gone, himself, too far. It is clear that the Americans do not play the game on their agricultural subsidies. All they are trying to do is to maintain the system as it is. Mid-term elections are for something. Is all the more ridiculous there, in the United States, many opposition to these subsidies and that the Americans know very well that their budgetary situation requires sacrifices for which farmers will be among the first to pay the Bill. This is the sign of an administration that is down, which no longer has no idea of its national interest. This is also true in France.

But what is these multilateral negotiations have a chance to lead a day

Such a crisis is not a first. Everyone has forgotten the failure of the ministerial meeting in Brussels in 1990 in the negotiations on the Round Uruguay and three years of torpor that followed. Today, one can imagine three scenarios. Or the negotiators, United States and European Union in particular, meet discreetly in the coming months to prepare the ground for an acceptable agreement for developing countries. If mid-term elections are favourable to George w. Bush, one can imagine that the US administration could get through Congress a few months before losing its bargaining authority. In this case, an agreement is still possible to here next year. The second option, it is a report of three years. There is then a new President in the United States, and a new French Government, which will finally include French agriculture has a real interest in international trade. Last event, the record remains blocked for ten years. The liberalisation of trade will then essentially by technical progress, particularly in the area of services. But as the negotiators do not like to be unemployed, they want to negotiate bilateral agreements. And then we will have a catastrophe.

Why did you qualify these bilateral agreements of "disaster"

It see the conclusion of such agreements will prove much more difficult than one might think. The United States gave us a sneak peek. I do not, for example, a negotiation between the European Union and Mercosur succeed. Otherwise, this would mean, for French farmers, competitive pressure, including sugar, as strong as if it was to the WTO. Europeans are sweet illusions on this subject. If you take the service sector, where it will be to negotiate the entry of an insurance on a market such as the Brazil company, which will select one: AXA or Allianz In short, the WTO negotiations are not funny. The bilateral negotiations, they will be bloody, in all cases between major groups. Conversely, this means that it is negotiating on which is not expensive, which has no economic interest. Small countries will be particularly vulnerable in these bilateral agreements, which are very asymmetric. It is the return of colonialism in the raw state. This is not a chance if the GATT, the predecessor of the WTO, was born in 1947 on the rubble of the bad memories left by the bilateral agreements concluded in the 1930s.