EU's General Affairs Council to discuss WTO negotiations
Government Information Unit
Ministry for Foreign Affairs
Press Release 232/2004
23 July 2004
The European Union’s General Affairs and External Relations Council will be assembling in Brussels on Monday 26 July. The main topic for the meeting will be the World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations. Taking part in the meeting from Finland will be Paula Lehtomäki, the Minister for Foreign Trade and Development.
The Council will be concentrating on the current situation in the WTO’s Doha Development Round. On 16 July the Chairman of the WTO General Council announced his compromise proposal for a continuation of the negotiations and discussions about the exact contents of an agreement will continue until the end of July.
The biggest stumbling block to making progress in the negotiations has been agriculture, where there are considerable differences of opinion among the WTO members. In order to speed up the negotiations on agriculture EU Commissioners Lamy and Fischler sent a letter to WTO members in May stating that the EU is ready to be flexible on agricultural export subsidies on condition that all forms of export competition are treated equally strictly and that the agricultural package is, overall, acceptable to the EU.
Finland feels that it is particularly important that agreement about a framework for the negotiations be reached by the deadline. Finland also considers that during the spring the EU has shown a high degree of flexibility and that attaining results will now require considerable concessions on the part of the other WTO members. The EU must retain the conditionality of its offer and ensure that the final outcome is evenly balanced.
The situation in the Sudan and the Middle East will also be on the agenda.
The meeting will also deal with the EU’s new funding frameworks, as the European Commission will be presenting legislative proposals, approved on 14 July, concerning the frameworks. Actual negotiations will start in September.
Further information: Matti Lassila, Director, tel. + 358 9 1605 5530 (WTO), and Tanja Jääskeläinen, Counsellor, tel. +358 9 1605 5330 (other external relations), Ministry for Foreign Affairs