9. #WTO: Agriculture: the hot potato at the WTO’s ministerial conference

The World Trade Organisation has been in existence for almost 25 years, and in that quarter-century it’s been written off many times, and despite the stresses and strains of policing global commerce it still survives. But the WTO’s rationale, purpose and capacity are under the microscope as much as ever with the forthcoming ministerial conference, known as MC12, fast approaching. Trade ministers from the WTO’s members will gather in Geneva for four days of intense discussions whose impact will be felt by farmers, food producers and consumers globally. The ninth episode of Food for Europe looks at the European Union’s approach to MC12 from the perspective of trade in food and farm commodities: what’s at stake, the points of contention, and prospects for resolving the disputes hampering the WTO from functioning. After the failure of the last ministerial conference in Buenos Aires in 2017, the WTO’s credibility as the rule-setter and enforcer of global trade is waning, as key stakeholders in the organisation have sought to protect their own farming and food production sectors at the expense of competitors. The EU goes into MC12 seeking further reform of domestic support, or subsidies. Ove the past 20 years the Union has shifted from a system that subsidised production to a system that provides direct income support to farmers. The EU is now looking to others – the United States, India and China included – to cut back on the tens of billions of euros spent on trade-distorting domestic support, which puts EU exporters at a competitive disadvantage. Our guests on this episode include John Clarke and Ignacio Garcia from the Commission’s DG AGRI and DG TRADE respectively, and we also hear from Jean-Marie Paugam, the deputy director-general of the WTO, a member of the new management team leading the organisation into MC12. Our field report comes from Luxlait, a dairy cooperative in Luxembourg that exports its products to the highly competitive markets of China and Africa, and is therefore heavily dependent on a rules-based system that enables fair competition and high standards.