To Chuck or Tweak? This is now the big question….

17. Dezember 2005

Liane Schalatek writes:
When I came into the NGO computer center late this afternoon, there was a big line in front of the photocopiers. This can, for the WTO-savy, mean only one thing: a new draft ministerial text and a bunch of adrenaline-driven civil society reps who all want to get a hand on a bloody copy. Now. Immediately, and no, I was in front of you and could you please wait your turn, thank you very much…

Anyway, a few minutes later, the 50 page document in hand, comes the next challenge – to find somebody, who – if not read – has at least glanced at the draft ministerial declaration, who is insider enough to know where the 10 or so most critical reference points are and who is either brave, smart (self-confident, in case the smarts fail him or her) or adventurous enough to venture an educated guess what the new draft ministerial means for the Hong Kong conference and beyond.

Everybody I asked seemed to agree on one thing: the text is not great, not by a long stretch of imagination. That means, of course, great in the sense that we would see a turnaround by EU and US. That they are conceding their ridiculously development-unfriendly maximum demands in NAMA and services while not willing to give an inch in agriculture. Or great in the sense that the real development concerns of the group of 110 or so developing countries would be placed center stage. No, the new draft ministerial text has nothing of the sort. It does seem to have some minimal concessions towards the development package that the G 110, which presented itself with so much bravado yesterday, listed as the bare minimum. Some references to it are there – but they are tacked onto the factually unchanged negotiating positions with which EU and the US came to Hong Kong.

So what to do now? The principled position I would personally like to see the developing countries take is to reject the text outright, pointing to the fact that there is not enough in it for them to see an honest good faith effort by the EU and the US. This would be the “chuck-the-text” option. The other possibility for developing countries is to throw all left-over negotiation energy into the last night, the last Green Rooms in hopes of getting some marginal improvements—crawling incremental change by incremental change to something maybe a little bit better before the negotiations are going back to Geneva. This would be the “tweak-the-text” option. To chuck or to tweak? Honestly, this really should not have to be the question……

Liane Schalatek is associate director of the Heinrich Boell-Foundation’s office in Washington.

Kategorie: Liane Schalatek