Lamy US-EU Speech,Washington- "Post Seattle : What next"?
Janet M Eaton
To: stopwt...@onelist.com
Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2000 14:40:16 +0100
From: Marc Maes <Marc...@ncos.ngonet.be>
Dear all,
while looking for news about the US-EU meeting in Washington on the
Millennium Round, I came across this speech by Pascal Lamy.
SPEECH/00/44
Speech by Pascal Lamy
European Commissioner for Trade
Post-Seattle : what next?
Check against delivery
European Institute
Washington, 17 February 2000
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is a great pleasure to be at the European Institute for the first time
with my Trade Commissioner hat on.
People sometimes ask: what is the European Institute ? Let me tell you what
it's not. It is neither a think-tank, nor an academic institution; it is
not an NGO, nor a corporation. It does not act as a mouthpiece for the US
in Europe, nor as a mouthpiece for Europe in America. So what is it?
Hard to say, but it, whatever it is, is where the roads meet in the
trans-Atlantic dialogue between governments, business, NGOs, academics, and
think-tanks. Whatever it is, the Institute has come an enormously long way
in a short space of time, and I pay tribute to Jacqueline for all she has
done to make the European Institute what it is.
In selecting a topic for this talk, I had all sorts of fancy ideas.
However, everybody warned me that I'd better ask Jacqueline, or she will
just make sure that everyone asks you about the subject she wants you to
address anyway. So I played it safe. I am very happy with the topic she
has selected for me to address. It is, after all, the main focus of my
visit here to Washington, and increasingly a question we are all starting
to consider: "so what next, after Seattle?"
The statute of limitations on post-Seattle analysis is starting to run out.
The commentators are starting to hand over to the historians. I wonder
whether in the years to come we will regard Seattle as a major watershed.
"Ah yes, I saw Charlene in October 1999, but that was of course before
Seattle". Or even, "my son got engaged that May, but that was after
Seattle". If Seattle is to be seen as a major watershed, there could be
both a downside and an upside to that. To start with the downside, the
pre-Seattle period could be seen as a high water mark in terms of the
international community's willingness and ability to tackle major
questions. I actually don't believe this. I think the upside prevails.
Edgar Morin argues that the 21st century began in Seattle. Perhaps we will
come to see it as the end of "business as usual", and the start of real
progress towards international economic governance. I'll try to explain this.
Let me begin however with a little post-Seattle analysis of my own: was
there anyone out there who thought the Seattle week went well ?
Lessons of Seattle
Let me start with a recent observation from Tom Friedman in the New York
Times. He described a picture of three Seattles: those who want to slow
down the world so that they can get off, those who want to slow it down so
that they can get on, and those who want to speed it up so that they can
stay ahead. (In passing I should at least note that there was a fourth
Seattle, a city called Seattle, which concluded that it didn't care a damn
how fast the world went, as long as it went somewhere else. It must have
been tough for some in Seattle to recall that they had actually competed
against other towns to stage this train-wreck.)
I am not sure where the EU or US would fit into the three Seattles model.
But it is clear that neither the US nor the EU got what we both wanted: a
new Round, and a new sort of Round to boot. Clearly, the differences
between us contributed in part to the failure at Seattle. Nonetheless, we
still have shared interests in launching a new Round, particularly one that
deals with the reality of the globalizing economy; and we need to find a
better way of expressing that shared interest.
Any new Round cannot just be about market access, but must overhaul the
WTO rule-book. Investment, competition, trade facilitation, labour issues,
the environment, are all critical if the WTO is to stay relevant, and to
reflect and respond to public opinion. More of that later.
What did others think about Seattle? The business community,
uncharacteristically silent for much of the week, was clearly unhappy. I
should be interested to hear what business representatives here think. My
feeling is that, collectively, you thought that to intervene would be to
convince the world of what the more extreme representatives of civil
society were saying: that business interest amounted to proof positive that
the WTO is a capitalist plot.
But what about developing countries and NGOs? According to established
media wisdom, did they not both (in their own ways) beat the rich western
governments and the entire process of globalisation, hands down? Setting
aside the activities of a few characters wearing balaclavas and sporting
rocks, not Monarch butterfly wings, I think this view needs a little
updating as well.
The NGOs who want to draw the concerns of the world to the dangers of
unharnessed, unchannelled, uncontrolled globalisation are quite right in my
view. At its most raw, globalization can generate outcomes (for example
income and wealth distribution) with a sharper, frankly less fair, pattern
of winners and losers. That view underlies the European vision of a Round
which would include the development of the WTO as a rule-making
institution. In short, international economic governance is needed.
But some want us to run before we can walk. We cannot and should not try
to create a perfect, utopian democratic model all at once. If we had an
effective model of international governance with a democratic deficit, we
could fix it. The problem is that we don't yet have a functioning model.
Moreover, some NGOs take an extreme view, that the WTO is a capitalist
plot, determined to steamro ller workers, consumers, turtles, dolphins and
monarch butterflies in its path. To you, my message is simple: the absence
of a Round means that you leave in place what you regard as an unreformed,
dangerous institution. The WTO still stalks the land.
I think the signs are there that a number of NGOs are indeed starting to
think the whole question through. Opposition is simply not enough. What
direction should the trading system take? Our message: engage in the
debate with us. What are the right starting principles for real
international economic governance?
Turning to developing countries, I think it is clear that the media view is
simply wrong. For the most part, they left Seattle angry and frustrated.
Action to restore the faith and the confidence of developing countries in
the WTO is the absolute priority. In the short term, the EU hopes that
this translates into a package over the next few weeks of confidence
re-building measures. For example, we have hovered too long on the brink
of agreement to the tariff and quota free treatment of goods from least
developed countries. I hope we can confirm that deal shortly.
Equally important is recognition of the legitimate concerns developing
countries have over implementation of the Uruguay Round agreements. But
the real push on implementation will only come in the context of a new
Round. That is when we will be able to take the really major steps to
integrate developing countries more effectively into the world economy.
Finally, let us not forget the WTO itself, which limped out of Seattle
like a whipped dog. We have to re-build confidence in the institution. In
the short term, that means a number of small institutional improvements
which can be implemented relatively easily, relatively uncontroversially,
through the General Council in Geneva. Perhaps the only good thing about
having a really disastrous meeting is that it is quite easy to get people
to addresss the question, at least in the short term. Bigger, long term
questions need to be addressed later.
On this basis, Mike Moore, with our full backing, should be able to put
together a package of measures to address the concerns of developing
countries, and to rebuild confidence in the WTO over the next few weeks.
But what next ?
Confidence re-building measures in place, we can start to think about the
"what next" bit. From our perspective, the "what next" should be the
Round, and in parallel, to look at longer term questions of WTO reform.
On the question of a Round, the established wisdom here (i.e., not just in
Europe) is that it will be impossible to launch a new Round before next
year at the earliest, not least because of the US elections: and that we
should await the arrival of a new Administration and Congress before trying
to get the plane off the tarmac. I do not believe this is right either as
analysis of the situation or as prognosis of what we should do next.
I have said that I do not believe it was a particularly smart piece of
timing to hold the WTO Ministerial at this point in the US election
timetable in a US city. I'm not blaming the US for this: it just wasn't
smart timing. This view appears to have spawned a busy cottage industry
inside the US Administration: trying to find ways of pinning the failure in
Seattle on EU election timetables. Now granted, we have 15 Member States,
and that means that there is always an election coming along for keen
political fans. I would be happy to provide a full list. But as a number
of Congressmen have pointed out, most objective lists of important election
dates begin with the South Carolina primary on Saturday.
I do need to nail the notion that we deliberately sabotaged the Round by
overloading the agenda with impossible subjects to cover our usual
dastardly inflexibility on agriculture. This view conveniently ignores
that the EU was the first to put its cards on the table, and call for a
Round, and that our agenda was not so much overloaded as open, including on
agriculture, where we came to Seattle prepared to negotiate. Indeed, the
EU was the only partner which went into Seattle with a positive, inclusive
position, not saying "no" to any proposal from anyone else. Frankly, most
partners have been perfectly willing to agree in private on the importance
of considering such issues as investment in a new Round, but tell us they
are simply "too difficult" politically. My view on this is that it will
indeed be difficult to create a system of rules-based international
governance. In this era, governments are under great pressures, are pulled
in lots of different directions. But no-one seems to doubt the size of the
task, and it's about time we got started.
Either way, let's end this talk of elections. Charlene Barshefsky and I
were both appointed to our jobs (although there is one big difference: I
can be sacked by the European Parliament). For people like us, elections
are a deeply inconvenient notion.
But it must be wrong to believe that any one election should rule out a
course of action until the votes are cast, at which time we try to slip one
past the exhausted voters when they are not paying attention. If we wait
until next year to get past the US elections, some will indeed then say
that we need until 2001 or 2002 for the French elections, then it will be
2002 for the US mid-terms, and so it will go on. There will always be an
election going on somewhere. There is always a good reason for sitting and
waiting.
So we need a new Round
That is why I have said publicly that we should be ready to try to launch a
new Round this year if the circumstances permit us to do so. Now there is
plenty of scope for caution here. The greatest mistake would be to call
Ministers together for another high level meeting, only for us to fail,
once again, to launch a Round. The WTO cannot afford a second failure.
But the small, concrete steps that we can and should take now, in the
mini-package, are needed, regardless of whether we try to launch a Round
later this year, next year, or indeed never.
And we then have to prepare our ground extremely carefully. We stand by
our view that we need an inclusive Round for all the reasons we have given.
But all WTO members, including the EU and the US, have a duty to look
again at the positions in Seattle, including the detail, and ask whether
they were tenable. With a renewed commitment to flexibility on all sides,
and I stress, on all sides, we may yet find a way through.
Reform
I should say a word or two about the reform question, and how it fits in
with the question of a Round. We need a few concrete, low-key, operational
steps in the short term to restore the credibility of the WTO as an
institution. These I hope we can agree to quickly - ideas such as
improving the preparation of Ministerial meetings, better internal and
external transparency.
Others believe that we need to take reform further. I favour this approach.
We do need to look at ways of making the WTO at the same time more
democratic, more transparent, more efficient, and give it a better "fit"
with other Bretton Woods institutions. This is an extremely difficult but
nonetheless vital task, of course: as Paul Tran said recently, "Convergence
is a minimum, coherence is a must and cohesion is a hope". I also favour
establishing some form of Eminent Persons' Group to look at the big
long-term questions, such as how the WTO should fit within the
international governing system.
But one word of caution on timing. Too heavy a short-term focus on reform
plays directly into the hands of those who do not want a Round, for
whatever reason. My solution is that we tackle the major questions of
reform in the second stage of this process, when they can be considered, in
parallel with, or even as part of, a new Round. That way, we improve the
chances of getting reforms accepted. The principle of the big package
still holds.
Reflections on the art of political compromise under the media spotlight
Before concluding, let me make very clear that we have no illusions, and I
don't think the US has either: if we are to launch a new Round, we will
need to "bridge" our positions with each other and with other partners.
But this "bridging" business is quite subtle. It is no easy task in the
modern era. Ministers are operating under the full spotlight of the media,
and we are expected to act tough in defence of complex positions. To
illustrate how far the world had changed, I am reminded that a previous
trade Round in 1950 (which was to last all of seven months), opened in the
small and rather sleepy English seaside town of Torquay. For those of you
who do not know Torquay, the local equivalent would be a slightly bigger
version of Oxford, Maryland. I know recent Middle East peace talks were
held in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, but a major multilateral negotiation
is quite another matter. One can imagine the Trade Ministers of the
Torquay era strolling along the undoubtedly breezy seafront, pipe in hand,
discussing earnestly the prospects for tariff cuts. The local newspaper
might have run a story or two, perhaps a special edition. But the national
media would not have cared, let alone the international equivalent.
Ladies and gentlemen, the days of the Torquay Round are gone. The position
of the EU, the US, and indeed many other countries is perfectly
legitimately, and increasingly, the subject of fascinated media scrutiny.
We should not roll back the clock, or even try to.
But we do need to maintain the possibility for Ministers to handle the
important business with some discretion. Linen is not always best washed
in full public view. So I propose to tell you precisely nothing about the
likely content of my talks with Charlene Barshefsky this afternoon, nor
indeed about my recent discussions with Mike Moore, or Ministers from
India, Japan, South Africa, Canada, Egypt, Brazil, Mexico, Thailand, just
to name a few.
Partly, I do not wish to build up expectations, or mislead anyone. We are
still someway from launching a Round. It is easy for people to read too
much into individual meetings. But nor am I trying to slip agreement to a
Round past the public gaze. When there is something to propose, let this
debate be full and open. We come with nothing to hide. If the public
conclusion is against a Round, even having heard the arguments, then fine.
But my bet is that if we handle this debate properly, we will start to see
people come on board, both at the governmental and non-governmental level.
Conclusions
To conclude, if there is such a thing as a post-Seattle era, and I think
there probably is, we need to recall that the importance of such concepts
lies in that they are defined by reference to what came before. Some look
back with nostalgia to the Torquay sea-front where we could stroll on the
sea-front without a whiff of teargas or pepper spray. Others look back
only as far as the Uruguay Round, where a Round was launched largely
without public debate, and where the only media attraction was how hard we
were fighting with the US on agriculture.
The simple fact is that the world has become more complicated.
Globalization means that we have to do different things, as governments.
Not more, not less necessarily, but different things. And the rise and
rise of the media means that government by subterfuge is no longer an
option, and that's again inconvenient for the likes of me, but it's
basically a good development.
Which brings us, finally, to the test of true political leadership. Are we
willing and able to go out and battle for what I believe is the right
solution, in uniquely testing circumstances? I hope so.
Marc Maes
Research and Policy Dpt
NCOS
NCOS
Vlasfabriekstraat 11
B-1060 Brussels
Belgium
Tel.: +32 2 536 11 36
Fax.: +32 2 536 19 02
E-mail: marc...@ncos.ngonet.be
__________________________________________________________________
Nationaal Centrum voor Ontwikkelingssamenwerking
National Centre for Development Cooperation
Centro Nacional de Coopéración al Desarrollo
Centre National de Coopération au Développement pour la Communauté Flamande
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