NO Padraig Walshesays that what's on the table means serious losses for farmers and no gains for industry
I welcome this opportunity to clarify the main issues in the current WTO negotiations and to set out the reasons why an unbalanced agreement is worse than no agreement for Ireland. I will be showing that the EU offer on agriculture is very substantial, but on industry and services, other countries are offering little in return.
There are three major areas covered in the negotiations: agriculture, industrial tariffs (also known as non-agricultural market access or Nama) and services. A balanced outcome would mean that protection under all three headings would be significantly reduced. When the most recent effort at Potsdam by the EU, US, Brazil and India to progress the negotiations failed, it was because the advanced developing countries refused to give ground on their industrial tariffs. Trade in services was not even discussed. Brazil and India will take as much as they can get to access the EU food market, but give little to provide improved access to the EU and the US to their markets for manufactured goods and services.
Peter Mandelson's record shows he is neither a friend of agriculture nor of Ireland's interests in WTO, but after Potsdam, he said: "In Europe, we are prepared to pay a lot, but we cannot do so for next to nothing in return. It emerged from the discussion on Nama that we would not be able to point to any substantive or commercially meaningful changes in the tariffs of the emerging economies as a reasonable return."
Those who criticise the EU position on agriculture in the WTO negotiations must not be aware of the magnitude of the offer. The EU Council of Ministers agreed the union's negotiating mandate in October 2005, based on the major reform of the Cap in recent years. EU Commissioner for Agriculture Mariann Fischer Boel, recently summarised the EU offer on agriculture: "Europe was prepared to cut our average farm tariffs by more than half. It took decades to achieve the same results in industry. We were prepared to eliminate export subsidies by 2013 and cut trade distorting domestic farm subsidies by 70 per cent."
I am concerned about the generosity of the EU mandate offer. It includes a cut of up to 60 per cent in beef import tariffs. This would undermine our specialist beef production from suckler herds - which accounts for over 50 per cent of our total beef output - unless other measures are agreed as part of a WTO deal to ensure a level playing field between EU-produced beef and imports from non-EU countries.
Farmers in Ireland and the union are subject to the most rigorous food safety, traceability, animal welfare and environmental standards. It is clear from Irish Farmers' Association investigations in Brazil - the largest exporter of beef to the EU - that such standards do not apply there.
It is a matter of concern to me that Mandelson, as negotiator for the EU, seems to have abandoned this legitimate area of the negotiations - known as "non-trade concerns". I have called on Minister for Agriculture and Food Mary Coughlan to insist that there can be no WTO deal without an agreement on health, safety and environmental standards.
As regards the impact of WTO on the poorest countries of the world, the EU already provides duty-free and quota-free access to all imports of agricultural and industrial goods from the 50 least developed countries, under the "everything but arms" agreement. In recent months, the EU has announced its plans to extend this deal to all the African, Caribbean and Pacific regions as part of the economic partnership negotiations. Some critics of EU trade and development policy seem to ignore these facts to suit their arguments.
I have seen the statements from Chambers Ireland, which are critical of the Government's position on the WTO negotiations. Chambers has claimed that unless the EU offers even more concessions on agriculture, Ireland's future economic prospects are threatened. They have claimed that a new world trade agreement is "overwhelmingly in Ireland's interest". These claims are without foundation and I challenge chambers to substantiate them. What is really on the table is a major loss in agricultural production and profitability - with clear consequences for the food industry - and no gains for industry and services.
Maybe Chambers Ireland's objective is globalisation. But there would be only a very small number of winners from globalisation - mainly US multinationals - and the businesses it represents are unlikely to benefit. Perhaps a few see a future in importing and distributing Brazilian beef.
• Padraig Walsheis president of the Irish Farmers' Association