Director-General Pascal Lamy, in opening the Trade Negotiations Committee meeting on 26 July 2007, urged Members to study the draft texts on agriculture and industrial goods during the summer break and come back in September “ready to engage in intensive negotiations”. “We have already come a long way in this Round, and the distance left to go is not so great — but it will require extra efforts,” he said.
When we last met in informal session, on 22 June, there was a strong reaffirmation of our collective target: full modalities in Agriculture and non-agricultural market access negotiations (NAMA) and commensurate progress in other areas of the negotiations in line with our mandate. This is the essential step we must take in order to conclude the DDA successfully and soon.
I emphasized then that the Geneva process is and must remain the core of the negotiation. This is vital to ensure the full participation and informed decision making we all want. Since our June informal meeting, I am pleased to say that the negotiating process here in Geneva has been significantly reinforced and intensified.
I would like to thank delegations for responding to my call to step up their level of substantive engagement in the multilateral process run by the Negotiating Group Chairs. Such engagement remains the key to further progress.
We will shortly be hearing from all the negotiating group Chairs, and I believe that we will be able to conclude from their reports that some good progress has been made across the board over the last few months – in some areas in absolute terms, and in others in terms of clarifying the outstanding issues.
The major development, of course, has been the circulation of draft modalities texts last week by Ambassadors Falconer and Stephenson, the Chairs of the Agriculture and NAMA groups.
I am sure I speak for all of you in thanking them for their untiring efforts and for the excellent job they – and all the Negotiating Group Chairs – continue to do.
As the Chairs have underlined, these are draft texts. They are not negotiated or agreed texts. The negotiation is up to you, the participants. And the virtue of these texts is that they allow you all to negotiate at a more concrete, intense and specific level.
Both Chairs have made it very clear from the start that their draft modality papers are only another step in the process and that they will have to be revised in the light of the views expressed by participants. They identify possible areas of convergence and areas where gaps still need to be bridged. That is up to you, the participants, to undertake in the process that the Chairs are running with my full support.
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