Agriculture and developing countries in the new round of negotiations within WTO

Abstract

The Ministerial Conference held in Doha (Qatar) launched a new round of multilateral trade negotiations in World Trade Organization. It is called the development round because the interests and needs of developing countries are in the focus of negotiations. One of the most important (and controversial) questions is the liberalization of international trade in agricultural products. The beginning of that process was the conclusion of the Agreement on agriculture during the Uruguay Round which was followed by the negotiations initiated in 2000. The negotiations are supposed to finish until the end of the year 2006. Analyzing the recent results of negotiations, we can conclude that a lot of questions are not harmonized and that in front of the negotiators is a very difficult and complex task to overcome the existing differences and find compromise solutions. The results of the Doha negotiations (including agriculture) are very important for the future of the multilateral trading system.