Die WTO auf dem Prüfstand: Zur Notwendigkeit einer Millennium-Runde

This economic policy forum addresses the subject “New Challenges for the WTO: Do we need a Millennium Round?”. Brian Hindley has serious doubts whether the Millennium-Round should be revived. While the EU suggests that an agreement on competition policy should be essential for new multilateral trade negotiations, the Departement of Justice which administers competition policy in the US is less enthusiastic about the idea. The same applies to rules on investment. The author discusses both aspects of the EU’s extended agenda proposals and comes to the conclusion, that what is left is a rag bag. A bag that contains some useful issues, some dubious ones, some downright bad ones, but without enough content to fuel a credible multilateral trade negotiation. His conclusion is, that perhaps the case for multilateral agreements on competition policy and investment can be strengthened and if the Commission can do that, it should. The case for a Millennium Round based on the extended agenda is weak. In the opinion of Heinz Hauser, a new Millennium Round has a high potential to fail. The author discusses his hypothesis in three steps. First, he draws attention to the question, which conclusions can be seen from Seattle. Second, he analyses the political environment for a hypothetically new round. He wants to substantiate that the expected results of a new round would be more harmful than beneficial for a liberal world trade arrangement. In a third step Hauser makes clear that the compliance with the committments form the Uruguay Round is still unsatisfactory. The paper by Ulrich Hiemenz argues that a better integration of developing countries into the multilateral trading system is a key challenge at the beginning of the new millennium. He emphasises that a new round of multilateral trade negotiations launched under the auspices of the WTO would provide a window of opportunity for all participating countries to improve their living standards through better market access, greater domestic efficiency and higher productivity. Developing countries could even benefit more from further trade liberalisation than industrialised countries, provided they implement the domestic policy reforms necessary to capture these benefits.