London trade talks must not stitch up poor countries

A critical trade meeting between the EU, US, India, Brazil, Japan and possibly Australia is taking place today at India House in London. Ahead of December’s World Trade Organisation summit in Hong Kong, the small group of ministers aim to break the current deadlock around world trade talks.

Aftab Alam, head of ActionAid International’s Trade Justice Campaign says: "The outlook for this meeting is not good. With the majority of the WTO’s members locked out, it seems very unlikely that any deals brokered will do anything more than benefit rich countries.

It is shocking that there will be no African nations in the room – especially when this is supposed to be a development round of talks that benefit poor countries.

The current EU and US deals on agriculture are a sham, offering little real reduction in cutting farm subsidies. It is time for the EU and US to put something more on the negotiating table. They must stop pushing poor countries to open their industrial and services markets, offer dramatic cuts on agricultural subsidies and give protection to poor farmers in developing countries.

If rich countries do not offer any substantial concessions, poor countries must reject the proposals from this meeting otherwise they could face a development disaster at Hong Kong."

According to ActionAid estimates, the US currently gives $25bn a year in farm subsidies. Under its current proposal it would still give $17-27bn a year in 2008-12. Likewise, the EU currently gives 64bn euros a year; under its current proposal it could still give 55-58bn euros.

In the current WTO negotiations developing countries are being pressurised – particularly by the EU and the US – into accepting proposals at the WTO that will lead to massive job losses and the continued dumping of agricultural products.

ActionAid demands that secretive meetings between small groups of countries are scrapped and WTO procedures overhauled to make them transparent, inclusive and representative of all WTO members, particularly the poorest nations.