Arena Media Release 13 September 2003
There is a crisis in the WTO meeting at
Cancun over the "New Issues" that the European Union wants the world
to agree to in exchange for a tiny opening in its agricultural market. New
Zealand negotiators have intervened to try to make the unacceptable acceptable.
Arena calls on the New Zealand government to recognize that the agreements the
EU wants are unacceptable to most of the world and to let them die.
"Rather than playing around with the
unacceptable, New Zealand should positively acknowledge that the majority of
the world, and of the WTO, opposes these issues being foist upon them through
the WTO. There is very clearly no consensus for negotiations, as required by
the previous WTO Ministerial meeting at Doha. There should be no negotiations
on these New Issues," said a spokesperson for ARENA, Leigh Cookson
"It would be crazy to open up the
world further to unregulated corporate interests. That was soundly rejected in
the debates over the MAI. Let it die."
The EU wants an Investment agreement that
would revive the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) which the OECD
tried to negotiate, but was soundly rejected around the world in 1998,
including widespread protest in New Zealand.
It wants a Competition agreement which
would be just as dangerous, threatening public services and economic
development.
It wants agreements on "transparency
in" government procurement and trade facilitation which threaten the
ability of governments to foster local suppliers, and which would load
unaffordable compliance costs on developing countries with much more pressing
priorities, such as poverty.
There is huge opposition from the poor countries of the WTO. 71 developing countries representing the
great majority of the world's population, and including all the poorest
"Least Developed Countries", have stated their opposition to the "New
Issues" (or "Singapore Issues") and others share their concerns.
New Zealand negotiators in Cancun have suggested that an investment agreement be accepted but watered down to "best practice focused on transparency post establishment". That would open the subject for negotiations, with unpredictable and unacceptable results.