MOSCOW—World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks on industrial goods, a crucial element in efforts to seal a new global trade deal, must speed up, European Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson said.
Speaking on a visit to Moscow, Mandelson told Reuters in an interview the WTO risked missing a deadline for holding a ministerial meeting on the trade deal in July.
"We have senior official discussions going on quite intensively in Geneva at the moment. They're making very slow progress," Mandelson said late on Wednesday.
"They've got to accelerate, they've got to achieve more if we're to be in a position to call this much needed ministerial meeting in July," he said.
"I have not given up hope. On this there's a real will, a real determination on many people's part, not everyone's, to see this through in the time scale we have."
"We have, I am afraid, some way to go before we could have any confidence in calling a ministerial meeting in July."
The industrial goods talks, hosted by the United States and including key players such as the European Union, Japan, Brazil, India and China, come at a critical juncture for the WTO's Doha round to free up world trade.
The round, now in its seventh year, has repeatedly missed deadlines. WTO members now say they want to complete it by the end of this year, before a new U.S. administration takes office.
Talks on industrial goods are stalled on the degree to which developing countries will be exempted from requirements to cut tariffs.
Developed countries want to make sure these exemptions do not allow developing countries to shield an entire sector such as automobiles from market opening.
"The main political issue and argument to be had, is how and on what basis, to what extent, the emerging economies ... are going to make their fair share and their proportionate contribution to create new trade flows and new market access," Mandelson said.
Mandelson said there were still some issues to be resolved on agriculture, but that industrial goods were the key challenge in the talks.
Feeds