Mandelson upbeat on trade deal as Brown urges concessions

Published on Sunday 29 January 2006 01:39

PETER Mandelson, the European Union trade commissioner has said that he is "encouraged" by signs of progress at international economic talks after Chancellor Gordon Brown called on him to offer more EU concessions in a bid to help the deadlocked world trade negotiations.

Mandelson claimed that other nations and economic blocs were showing signs of making concessions on industrial goods and services.

The European Union has been under strong pressure to make concessions in agriculture to help troubled global trade talks, but it has insisted that leading developing states must be ready to open up their markets in goods and services.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum at the Swiss resort of Davos, Mandelson said: "I did feel encouraged by what I heard around the table. The commitment and flexibility shown by ministers to getting offers on industrial goods and services was encouraging."

The EU trade commissioner gave no further details. The EU has been pressing Brazil and India, both of which took part in the talks, to agree to open up their markets in areas of interest to the Europeans.

On Friday, Brown - who has long regarded Mandelson as a political rival - challenged the trade commissioner to make more efforts to break the deadlock.

He said: "Europe and America will have to make more concessions to get them [the talks] off the ground. We can't wait for months for this to happen. If we don't act, people will conclude that we don't have the will to reach a settlement."

Brown added that there had to be reform of the Common Agricultural Policy, adding that there was no justification for the present level of subsidy.

Ministers from World Trade Organisation (WTO) states held two days of talks to try to inject momentum into the WTO's Doha round of trade negotiations, which faces a deadline of the end of April for a draft deal.

US trade representative Rob Portman echoed Mandelson's words, telling journalists that there was agreement that all key areas of the round needed to make progress.

"There was consensus... about the need to move together as opposed to members of the WTO needing to wait for other parties to move first," he said.

The WTO's latest round of international trade negotiations, launched more than four years ago in an effort to boost economic growth and ease world poverty, has already missed several deadlines.

The latest was in Hong Kong last month when ministers failed to reach a draft accord covering difficult political decisions, such as how far rich nations should open their farm markets in return for better access for their industrial goods in developing countries such as Brazil and India.

The UK believes that the negotiations have become so bogged down in technical detail that it will require government leaders to break the log-jam.

Tony Blair is discussing a possible agenda and time for a summit with George Bush, with late March or early April seen as the likeliest date.