Tensions between French President Nicolas Sarkozy and EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson flared on Tuesday, casting an early cloud over France’s EU presidency.
The row came as France assumed the six-month presidency of the 27-nation bloc, after Sarkozy, renewing long-running complaints, suggested Mandelson and WTO Director General Pascal Lamy were trying to force an unfavorable trade deal on Europe.
Mandelson told the BBC that Sarkozy was “undermining” the EU’s position in world trade talks, adding that the French leader’s remarks would “make it harder” at the negotiations.
PHOTO: AFP
“Yes I am being undermined and Europe’s negotiating position in the world trade talks is being weakened,” he said, adding that the bloc’s negotiating strength “comes from our unity.”
Sarkozy, who hosted the EU heads and commissioners in Paris to mark the start of the French EU presidency, earlier said that the British commissioner would be loving the publicity.
“This is someone I have known for a long time and [he] must certainly be delighted with [the] publicity, which I don’t hesitate to give him when I don’t agree with him,” Sarkozy said as EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso stood beside him.
The French leader has long been fiercely critical of the British EU commissioner, accusing him of offering excessively generous concessions on farming in fraught global negotiations at the WTO.
The latest row was sparked by Sarkozy saying in an interview with French television channel France 3 on Monday that he would block any WTO agreement that would sacrifice farm production on the “altar of global liberalism.”
“Mr Lamy and Mr Mandelson want to make us accept a deal under which Europe would commit to cutting farm output by 20 percent and reduce farm exports by 10 percent,” Sarkozy told French television channel France 3.
“That would be 100,000 jobs lost, I won’t let it happen,” he added.
Mandelson’s spokesman challenged Sarkozy’s assessment of possible agricultural job losses, arguing that the president’s figures were based on what would have happened if the EU had accepted full demands from the Group of 20 emerging market and developing countries.
The negative effects on EU agriculture production would amount to an estimated decrease on average of 1.1 percent, while employment in agriculture would drop 2.5 percent by the end of the Doha implementation period in 2014, he said.
The Doha round of trade liberalization negotiations, launched in the Qatari capital in 2001, has long struggled, with all sides refusing to make big concessions.
Lamy, who has called a special meeting of the main WTO players later this month, says that progress on trade in agriculture and industrial products before the end of the month is pivotal to the overall talks.
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