15 September 2010
Doha success will rebalance trade rules in favour of the poor — Lamy
"The very fact that “agriculture” is now at the centre of the WTO's Doha Round of trade negotiations also speaks to the enormous power that the South has gained. In addition, the WTO has a dispute settlement mechanism that has, and can, allow members to peacefully settle their trade differences. In that mechanism what matters is not the size of a country or of its GDP, but the strength of the legal and economic arguments that it succeeds in putting forward.
But, if I have a message for you today, it is this. There are other battles to fight in the WTO. They may not be of an institutional nature, but they must nevertheless be fought. I refer here to the need to rebalance the rules of the Multilateral Trading System in favour of the poor, through the completion of the Doha Development Agenda; and of the need to climb ever higher mountains, by tackling emerging issues such as energy, climate change, and electronic commerce. We cannot afford to rest on our laurels in the WTO until our rule-book becomes outdated. Nor can we afford to misdiagnose the impasse in current negotiations as being 'institutional'."
WTO | News - Speech - DG Pascal Lamy - Doha success will rebalance trade rules in favour of the poor — Lamy
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