D+C Development and Cooperation (No. 2, March 2000, p. 3)

The most tangible results have been achieved in the two-year long process of negotiations between the 15 states of the European Union (EU) and the 71 African, Caribbean, and Pacific States (ACP) which have been members of the Lomé Convention for the last 25 years (see also pp. 8 - 17). One of the outstanding benefits for ACP countries in the new agreement is that EU markets will be further opened up for their exports, while protective measures in developing countries will only gradually be dismantled in the next 20 years. Both sides apparently recognised that the “level playing field” propounded by advocates of complete trade liberalisation will always work to the advantage of the strongest players in the field. As Carl Greenidge, Deputy Secretary General of ACP, puts it: “We first have to get out of the hospital and recover from our present weakness before we can start competing with the healthy economies of the North”. The new EU-ACP agreement provides for the required adjustment period for the ACP partners to prepare themselves for the challenges of globalisation. In the meantime, assistance will continue to build institutions and human capacities in developing countries in the hope that this will make them fitter to face global competition.

The EU-ACP partnership continues to function because it combines trade and development. This is not the case in the World Trade Organisation (WTO), created to promote liberalisation of trade based on firm rules and dispute settlement mechanisms, but not mandated to promote development. Its ministerial conference in Seattle last December (see pp. 4 - 5) failed to agree on a new Millenium Trade Round because too many participants feared that trade liberalisation was going to fast and too far, and that other important social and economic aspects were being disregarded in the process. Powerful demonstrations from the ranks of civil society against the growing disparities and inequalities in the world caused by economic globalisation and liberalisation underlined that the WTO has lost touch with the needs and aspirations of the people not only in poor developing countries, but also in parts of the rich industrialised nations.

The failure of the WTO conference turned out to be a boost for yet a third trade meeting, the tenth world conference of UNCTAD, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, held in the Thai capital of Bangkok in February. UNCTAD, which had led the struggle for a New International Economic Order in the 1970s but failed in its bid to regulate world trade through commodity funds and market interventions, had almost fallen into oblivion in the recent years of the Washington Consensus. But at UNCTAD-X in Bangkok, Secretary-General Rubens Ricupero was back with a new concept. “UNCTAD is particularly suited to become a sort of ‘world parliament for globalisation’”, he said at a preparatory meeting at the DSE in Berlin. “A parliament is not only a place where new bills are approved and become laws. Its is first and foremost a forum to discuss important issues in a representative and legitimate context.”

Ricupero's concept is clear: he wants UNCTAD to fill a gap that WTO has left in the relations between industrial and developing nations. Whereas in WTO, developing countries complain that their voices are not heard and negotiations are conducted in closed circles in virtual exclusion from the public, UNCTAD is to conduct an “open, transparent and mutually respectful dialogue” not only between governments but also with the people representing NGOs and civil society. In addition, UNCTAD is to aid developing countries in taking advantage of the opportunities offered through the process of globalisation. In Bangkok, Ricupero defined UNCTAD's role as follows: “As a knowledge-based and consensus-building organisation, it should assist developing countries to build institutions and develop the skills to formulate trade, investment and economic policies in general, to negotiate successfully with their partners and to take the best advantage of the opportunities resulting from negotiations.”

The UNCTAD approach could help to get the WTO process out of its present doldrums. Germany's Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development, Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, said that the Seattle failure was due to the fact that it disregarded the interests of developing and transition countries and that the opportunity should be used to think about the shared responsibility for the countries of the South and the East. Britain's finance minister Gordon Brown said WTO has to reflect “the needs and views of the developing countries and enable them to participate fully in the discussions and have ownership of the final agreement.” UNCTAD offers a form for this type of exchange. Its weakness, however, is that it has no mandate for decisionmaking in the field of trade, but at least it can improve the atmosphere which has suffered so badly after the Seattle debacle.