The Doha agenda

WTO | Understanding the WTO - The Doha agenda
At the Fourth Ministerial Conference in Doha, Qatar, in November 2001 WTO member governments agreed to launch new negotiations. They also agreed to work on other issues, in particular the implementation of the present agreements. The entire package is called the Doha Development Agenda (DDA).

The negotiations take place in the Trade Negotiations Committee and its subsidiaries, which are usually, either regular councils and committees meeting in “special sessions”, or specially-created negotiating groups. Other work under the work programme takes place in other WTO councils and committees.

The Fifth Ministerial Conference in Cancún, Mexico, in September 2003, was intended as a stock-taking meeting where members would agree on how to complete the rest of the negotiations. But the meeting was soured by discord on agricultural issues, including cotton, and ended in deadlock on the “Singapore issues” (see below). Real progress on the Singapore issues and agriculture was not evident until the early hours of 1 August 2004 with a set of decisions in the General Council (sometimes called the July 2004 package). The original 1 January 2005 deadline was missed. After that, members unofficially aimed to finish the negotiations by the end of 2006, again unsuccessfully. Further progress in narrowing members’ differences was made at the Hong Kong Ministerial Conference in December 2005, but some gaps remained unbridgeable and Director-General Pascal Lamy suspended the negotiations in July 2006. Efforts then focused on trying to achieve a breakthrough in early 2007.