Post-Seattle EU press conference

The European Union had approached Seattle with an open mind and an open agenda. It returns from there with its eyes opened too.

Today Pascal Lamy, European Trade Commissioner and Head of the EU Delegation at Seattle, and Franz Fischler, European Agriculture Commissioner, held a press conference in Brussels to sum up their experiences of the Seattle WTO Ministerial. Pascal Lamy made the following main points:

Faced with the failure of the Seattle conference, it is important to use the opportunity to take stock of the reasons why it happened and look to the future on that basis.

The reasons for the failure are both fundamental and circumstantial. The fundamental point is that there is a gap between, on the one hand, the need to have a rules-based system governing multilateral trade and, on the other, the capacity of this system - of the WTO - to take decisions. This capacity had moreover already failed in Geneva beforehand. As to circumstantial reasons: many have commented about the influence of the American electoral campaign on the conference's work. I do not blame anyone but I recognise the difficulty for any country to make concessions under these circumstances.

The European Union presented an open-minded and united front on the essential points. During the conference, the European Delegation continually tried to establish a bridge between the American position and that of developing countries. The negotiations stumbled less on issues proposed by the EU than on more traditional issues. In the future, the EU wants to continue with the same open attitude as it had during the Seattle conference.

A multilateral system governed by rules continues to be necessary. This is the reason why the way the WTO functions must be reviewed so that this organisation becomes at the same time more legitimate, more open and more effective. It could be envisaged, for example, that political issues should be resolved before the technical problems coming from them are tackled, and not the opposite way round as has been the case until now. We will therefore have to work so that the WTO functions better. We will also have to work to show developing countries that such a system is also in their interest.