Thursday

28th Sep 2023

EU and Australia push for resumption of Doha talks

Trade representatives from the European Union and Australia say they will push for further progress on the Doha round of multilateral trade talks at a meeting in Paris this week.

"I'm going to Paris with the very strong conviction that we now need to move forward speedily and we need to set a timetable [for the talks]," said European trade commissioner Catherine Ashton following a meeting in Brussels on Tuesday (23 June) with Australian Trade Minister Simon Crean.

Read and decide

Join EUobserver today

Become an expert on Europe

Get instant access to all articles — and 20 years of archives. 14-day free trial.

... or subscribe as a group

Trade ministers from around the World will meet on the sidelines of an annual ministerial meeting of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in Paris later this week (24-25 June) to assess the political willingness to officially resume the Doha talks that stalled in July 2008.

Several non-OECD members have also been invited to the meeting including India, Brazil, Chile, China, Indonesia, Russia, and South Africa, whose agreement will prove vital to securing a multilateral deal.

Mr Crean, who will chair the sideline talks, said he is keen to build on a re-engagement decision taken by the Cairns group – an eclectic bloc of 19 agricultural exporting countries - at a recent meeting in Bali at which China, Japan, India and the US also participated.

"We sense a political desire to want to move to the end-game. We have to capitalise on it," he said.

Recent US and Indian elections have slowed attempts to restart the talks, with the Democrat-dominated US Congress a potential stumbling block for the future.

Ms Ashton and Mr Crean also signed a mutual recognition agreement for product certification procedures on Tuesday, a move that will help to reduce business costs.

Agricultural subsidies

The two sides have traditionally clashed over the EU's farm subsidies, with Australia saying they amount to a major distortion of free trade.

While acknowledging the EU's progress in this area, partially brought about by various reforms to the Common Agricultural Policy, Mr Crean said "further work needs to be done."

"The Australian dairy industry has never looked back since it undertook structural reforms because it is producing for a world market competitively and that's what trade should be about," he said.

The EU recently re-introduced dairy exports subsidies to help European farmers struggling with the fall in world milk prices, but has committed to ditching all agricultural export subsidies by 2013, along with other members of the World Trade Organisation.

IEA says: Go green now, save €11 trillion later

The International Energy Agency finds that the clean energy investment needed to stay below 1.5 degrees Celsius warming saves $12 trillion [€11.3 trillion] in fuel expenditure — and creates double the amount of jobs lost in fossil fuel-related industries.

Opinion

How do you make embarrassing EU documents 'disappear'?

The EU Commission's new magic formula for avoiding scrutiny is simple. You declare the documents in question to be "short-lived correspondence for a preliminary exchange of views" and thus exempt them from being logged in the official inventory.

Latest News

  1. Poland's culture of fear after three years of abortion 'ban'
  2. Time for a reset: EU regional funding needs overhauling
  3. Germany tightens police checks on Czech and Polish border
  4. EU Ombudsman warns of 'new normal' of crisis decision-making
  5. How do you make embarrassing EU documents 'disappear'?
  6. Resurgent Fico hopes for Slovak comeback at Saturday's election
  7. EU and US urge Azerbijan to allow aid access to Armenians
  8. EU warns of Russian 'mass manipulation' as elections loom

Stakeholders' Highlights

  1. International Medical Devices Regulators Forum (IMDRF)Join regulators, industry & healthcare experts at the 24th IMDRF session, September 25-26, Berlin. Register by 20 Sept to join in person or online.
  2. UNOPSUNOPS begins works under EU-funded project to repair schools in Ukraine
  3. Georgia Ministry of Foreign AffairsGeorgia effectively prevents sanctions evasion against Russia – confirm EU, UK, USA
  4. International Medical Devices Regulators Forum (IMDRF)Join regulators & industry experts at the 24th IMDRF session- Berlin September 25-26. Register early for discounted hotel rates
  5. Nordic Council of MinistersGlobal interest in the new Nordic Nutrition Recommendations – here are the speakers for the launch
  6. Nordic Council of Ministers20 June: Launch of the new Nordic Nutrition Recommendations

Join EUobserver

Support quality EU news

Join us