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EUROPEAN REVIEW

ISSUE 9 - Page 3

WTO Millennium Round: Environment and workers struggle for agenda space

THE WORLD TRADE ORGANISATION (WTO) talks achieved a media status usually reserved for sport and soap opera at their 'millennium round' in Seattle last December. The protests and some violence attracted great attention to a conference which then failed in its objective, compounding the negative image which the organisation projected. For European Union negotiators disagreements with the United States over agricultural subsidies and access to EU markets for American high-technology goods were complicated by Third World countries' feeling of exclusion from the negotiating table and their apparent rejection of labour standards which EU spokespeople had committed themselves to before the conference.

Whilst trade unionists, especially in the U.S., campaigned for the WTO to take labour standards into account before opening up Western markets to goods from countries where child labour and sweat-shop wages were prevalent, delegates from the developing countries were suspicious that this was merely a device to keep their standard of living from benefitting from increased trade. 'They ( the WTO) cannot be the only institution that says labour standards are none of their business,' Eddy Laurijssen of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) said before the conference. His call was taken up, both by EU leaders, 'What we want is commitment to the implementation of core labour rights, because trade is also a matter of values, not economics only' said EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy to an ICFTU audience in Seattle, and President Clinton. The President's intervention in which he told the local newspaper, the Seattle Post Examiner, that he wanted to get tough with labour rights surprised both Third World and EU delegates. For the first time, he indicated that the United States wanted enforceable labour standards included in trade talks including sanctions against imports from countries which didn't comply.

U.S. and EU negotiators:Barshefsky & Lamy

Nations such as Malaysia responded that, 'If Clinton pushes the labour issue, it may make us wonder what's the point?' in the words of the secretary-general of Malaysia's ministry of international trade and security. 'We cannot agree to the inclusion of labour in the WTO'. The Third World delegates were also critical of the way that the event was organised so that the developed nations did most of the talking. The Foreign Minister of Guyana, Clement Rohee, said that system would have to stop if there were to be success in expanding free trade in future, 'We from developing countries were invited to this meeting, and asked to participate, but then treated like delinquents. We didn't come here to sit outside and drink coffee while the decisions were taken by the richer countries'. Pascal Lamy however felt that the organisation of the summit, had allowed small countries a major role in all discussions, but that 'Anyone who can achieve results from such a chaotic process is someone capable of working miracles'.

With so many different forces pulling in different directions it seemed obvious that four days were not enough in which to reach agreement. Charlene Barshefsky, the U.S. trade representative, who, earlier in the week was convinced the WTO's 135 member nations would reach an agreement by the end of the meeting eventually called a 'time out'. Reaction around the World was generally that it was better to have no agreement rather than a bad one. The spokesman on trade for the socialist group of MEPs, Beryl McNally, said it was the EU that pulled the plug on the talks. 'The United States was too greedy' she said, 'it was all take and no give. I can't believe that America's chief negotiator could have been so foolish to think we would accept it'. It was in U.S. political and business circles that the delay seemed most disappointing although American union AFL-CIO President John Sweeney made it clear he was happy with the situation, saying the week's events represented 'a stunning breakthrough in the public debate over globalization'. Talks will continue at Geneva in the spring. Nobody should be too surprised if they continue for a long time. The last round lasted for 7 years.

EU seeks to help jobs with employment weeks and action plans

THERE HAS BEEN MUCH activity in recent months among those concerned with employment in both the EU and other Europe-wide institutions. A new Employment Committee has been set up including the social partners and the Commission (Employment and Social Affairs Directorate) has published 'Employment in Europe 1999'. Although EU employment grew by 1.8 million in 1998, the US has been far more successful in creating jobs over the past 20 years than the EU. The employment rate (the number employed in relation to population of working age) is now considerably higher in the US than in Europe, whereas in the mid-1970s it was much the same.

Addressing this disparity was one of the tasks that Commissioner Diamantopoulou set herself when speaking to the Employment week conference in Brussels. She stressed that more could be done locally. Whilst the EU had to set key priorities and targets and national governments had to implement these through their National Action Plans, it was at local level that partnership action must 'help people and enterprise to generate jobs and economic activity, and to sustain and enrich communities'. With similar objectives the European Conference on Local Employment Partnerships met in Denmark to pool information about successful local job creation schemes.

The European Trade Union Confederation have also backed local measures whilst calling for more to be done overall to create jobs with the wider use of targets, more mainstreaming of equality between men and women and a review of tax/benefit systems generally. The European Parliament debated the Commission report in November and most MEPs stressed that more should be done to stimulate employment. Winfried Menrad (EPP/ED, Germany) stated that youth and long-term employment were unacceptably high. He also set out the areas that he believed to be essential to promoting growth, including more vocational training; more employee share ownership; new approaches to energy taxation; measures to make companies more adaptable; and flexibility on working hours. Anne van Lancker (PES, Belgium) felt that the strategy for fighting unemployment should not be only considering the US model where there was a different social situation and Maj Britt Theorin (PES, Sweden) argued that results so far to promote female equality were slight.

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