Origins

HOW IT STARTED

The first Ministerial Conferences

• The Doha Development Agenda is named after the location of the Fourth Ministerial Conference of the WTO in Doha, Qatar, from 9 to 14 November 2001, which gathered 142 member states. As the WTO is an intergovernmental international organisation, the most important decisions in the WTO are taken by member states’ ministers. Ministerial conferences are the WTO’s highest level decision-making body and are held at least every two years. The Ministerial Declaration of 14 November 2001 maintained the “process of reform and liberalisation of trade policies”, thereby ensuring that the multilateral trading system embodied in the WTO “plays its full part in promoting recovery, growth and development”. The Work Programme, which is known as Doha Development Agenda (DDA), adopted in this Declaration focuses on the needs and interests of the developing countries who constitute the majority of WTO-members. Notwithstanding the recognition that regional trade agreements can play an important role in the promotion of the liberalisation and expansion of trade and in the fostering of development, the Ministerial Declaration stressed the member states’ commitment to the WTO as “the unique forum for global trade rule-making and liberalisation”.
• The following Ministerial Conference held in Cancún in September 2003 did not lead to a significant implementation of the Doha Agenda, mainly due to disagreements on agricultural liberalisation.
• Since then, the initial mandate has been modified. Most notably, three of the so-called Singapore Issues dealt with at the First Ministerial Conference in 1996 in Singapore (competition, investment, and transparency in government procurement) have been deleted, whereas the fourth such issue (trade facilitation) continues to be part of the DDA.
• On the basis of the Doha and the Hong Kong Declaration, these negotiations concentrate on the core issues of agriculture, non-agricultural market access (NAMA), and services .

Recent developments

• A first package of framework agreements has been agreed upon in Geneva on 1 August 2004. After the Sixth Ministerial Conference in Hong Kong in December 2005, the failure to achieve consensus in negotiations on modalities for trade in agriculture and industrial products led to a suspension of the trade talks in July 2006 in Geneva.
• Negotiations resumed in early 2007. In July 2007 the Chairpersons of the Negotiating Groups for agriculture and non-agricultural market access (NAMA) circulated their first draft proposals for modalities in agriculture and NAMA. Following negotiations, the Chairs circulated revised versions of their papers in February, May, July and December 2008.
• In parallel to the negotiations on agriculture and NAMA there has been intensive work going on also in services, which is the third market access pillar of the DDA, as well as in rules and trade facilitation. The Chairs of the relevant negotiating groups also issued documents on elements required for the completion of the services negotiations as well as texts of the Anti-dumping and Subsidies and Countervailing Measures agreements.
• In 2008, there was a sense that the clock was ticking faster. The USA moved progressively into presidential and congressional election mode while EU is moving towards elections for the European Parliament and the nomination of a new Commission. Against this background, Pascal Lamy convened "Green Room" consultation in Geneva at ministerial level in July 2008.
• Lamy drew up a list of twenty "gateway" issues that would pave the way for an overall agreement on modalities for agriculture and industrial goods. In parallel, he convened a signalling conference on services to sketch out a services package. Over eleven days, the Green Room and G-7 [1] worked intensively. In the margins, the EU held twenty-five meetings, of which eight at GAERC level. However, the Green Room process became deadlocked. This was largely centred on a difficulty between the US and India on a mechanism to protect emerging economies from a surge in agriculture imports that might follow a cut in tariffs.
• Little progress has been reached in Geneva after the summer break and the first months of 2009. In the final declarations of the Summit on Financial Markets and the World Economy of 15 November 2008 and of 2 April 2009, the G20 leaders committed to refrain from raising new barriers to investment or to trade in goods and services, imposing new export restrictions, or implementing WTO inconsistent measures to stimulate exports by the end of 2010. In this regard, Pascal Lamy, following the WTO General Council mandate, initiated in 2009 a monitoring exercise on trade restrictive measures. More information on the WTO monitoring exercise and trade policy reviews can be found here .
• In May 2009, the General Council decided to convene the 7th session of the WTO Ministerial Conference on 30 November - 2 December 2009 in Geneva. The general theme for discussion will be "The WTO, the Multilateral Trading System and the Current Global Economic Environment".