World Trade Organisation

EDM number 1558 in 2006-07, proposed by Tony Baldry on 23/05/2007.

That this House welcomes the continuing efforts at the World Trade Organisation to revive the Doha development round; notes that the US President's fast track authority to negotiate the Doha round expires on 30th June 2007, which makes this the last opportunity to ensure that developing countries benefit from freer and fairer, rules-based multilateral trade that, according to estimates, would lift up to 35 million people above $1 a day were the Doha round achieved; believes that failure on the Doha round would undermine the achievements on aid and debt at the G8 summit at Gleneagles; further believes that it is time for members of the European Union to practise what they preach, by opening up markets unilaterally to developing countries' exports, abolishing all remaining production-linked and trade-distorting subsidies on the Common Agricultural Policy, eliminating import tariffs, removing all export subsidies and meaningfully delivering on the Aid for Trade agreement at Gleneagles, including an incremental increase of trade-related aid from the EU to 2 billion euro by 2010; and calls on the United Kingdom Government to put pressure on the EU, US and others to deliver on the Doha development round to ensure that current imbalances in trade rules are effectively addressed and that policy space is an integral part of all agreements, so that trade leads to the uplifting of millions of poor people in Africa and other developing continents.

This motion has been signed by a total of 76 MPs.