Togo briefs the press (Photo: Martin Kunz)


Thursday 15th December: Christmas comes early for Mandelson?

Today I think I’m beginning to understand the pitfalls of being a journalist. It’s nothing to do with editorial deadlines; it’s what you have to go through to get a story!

This morning I found myself running around trying to catch various press conferences. The ladies and gentlemen of the press seem to face numerous health and safety risks – just trying to avoid tripping over the camera bags and cables at one meeting packed to the rafters this morning was a challenge. They face getting caught in crushes in an attempt to be the first to get that all-important press release or picture and seem to spend half their time running around trying not to be late for press conferences that get cancelled at the last minute when whichever delegate is supposed to be leading them gets pulled unexpectedly into meetings. Worst of all, in the attempt not to miss anything you end up relying on the generally less than desirable food supplied at the conference centre!

Perhaps the highlight of the morning in terms of a photo opportunity was the return of the fair trade carol singers who serenaded Peter Mandelson with a modified version of “jingle bells”- “trade for aid, is the game you play. Its empty through and through” and then proceeded to present him with a wrapped up “empty development box”. Because this all created quite a lot of noise outside of a press conference, us NGOs have now been put on warning that if there’s one more stunt like that we won’t be allowed in them any more.

In terms of more substantial matters, there have now been a number of the “greenroom” meetings or Chairs’ Consultative Groups (CCGs) as they have been recently been renamed. From what we have been told, some of these start as late as half ten at night and go on until two or three in the morning. These are closed discussions where key parties are invited by the Chair of the conference or relevant working group to discuss ways forward. In the past greenroom meetings had been heavily criticised for being highly exclusive and failing to take into account the views of the less powerful countries. We are told however that the new CCGs are different from the green rooms of old. All interest groupings (such as the G20, African Group etc) have a representative there who is charged with ensuring that other delegations within their group are kept in the picture about the discussions. There are now usually just over 30 countries represented at these meetings – although of course plenty of other unofficial bilateral, or small group meetings happen in-between.

The public sparring between the EU and US continues, as does the attempt to deflect criticism about their own positions by blaming others for their failure to negotiate in good faith. If the EU is to believed, few offers (apart from their own of course) are being put on the table and so that at the moment there is simply not enough to negotiate about. The EU is adamant that it will not make any more concessions on agriculture and that talks need to move on to other areas. The US on the other hand maintains that agriculture is key to moving forward.

Later on, led by India, Brazil, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Argentina, the G20 (the group of around 20, larger developing countries with a particular interest on agriculture) got in on this blame game too – particularly taking issue with the EU’s position on agriculture. In fact, the Brazilian minister not only went as far as saying that the EU’s arguments were ridiculous but suggested that perhaps Peter Mandelson had been working too late last night and should have used Indian Computers to generate their statistics because then they would have been more accurate!

Most of what we are hearing about other than agriculture is the special ‘development package’ for Least Developed Countries. So far negotiations on this have focussed on the proposal to give the least developed countries duty and quota free access to developed country markets. We understand that whilst most countries agree to this in principle, some have reservations about opening up their markets to all least developed countries on a permanent and legally binding basis whilst others want to exclude certain domestically sensitive products from the deal. In terms of all the sectors being discussed, there seems to be most optimism about making an agreement on this issue and the group of Least Developed countries reported that at the moment at least they feel that on this at least there is a lot of good faith in the negotiations. Most developing countries, not just the LDCs seem to be publicly supporting this particular issue although as the Egyptian minister pointed out this afternoon for the development round to be considered a success, other issues of interest to the wider group of developing countries will need to be addressed too.

There is plenty of other stuff going on out of the headlines. So far services have hardly been mentioned by the big players, but according to members of the Philippine and Malawian delegations much is in fact going on behind the scenes. Many countries, the Africa, Caribbean and Pacific Group (ACP) in particular are unhappy with the current wording of the draft ministerial declaration in relation to services. Their biggest complaint is that the draft text as it stands would take an EU position and change the way in which the GATS (General Agreement on Trade in Services) is negotiated. At the moment, GATS is negotiated on a ‘requests and offers’ approach. This entails one country requesting another to open up a particular service sector. The second country does not necessarily have to agree to this. It can do so if it wishes to; or it can agree with certain provisos or simply refuse. This means that developing countries can be relatively flexible and are able protect certain service sectors if they want to. The current text would change all of this and move GATS within the normal mandatory negotiation structure, which would mean that all countries would have to negotiate and make concessions on services. The ACP countries are also concerned by the fact that the current text implies that future negotiations on GATS would cover government procurement – something that developing countries successfully resisted at the last ministerial conference in Cancun. According to the Philipino and Malawian Spokespeople, the African Caribbean and Pacific Group along with some other countries are preparing suggested amendments to the services texts and hope to take this forward shortly. Other sources however, suggest that a number of these countries are being strongly pressurised to drop these proposals and at this stage it is far from clear what sort of deal, if any will emerge.

It seems then at last as if some real negotiating is starting on at least a couple of issues although it is clear that agreement on them is still some time away On the others – well – I keep hearing that it is traditional for negotiators to keep things close to their chests for as long as possible. Just how long that is likely to be at this stage and whether it comes soon enough to bring about a good deal for development is just what everyone is speculating about.