Abstract EN:

Globalization has induced the liberalization of agricultural trading. Such liberalization has a mitigated impact on the economy of developing countries given the diversity of their level of development. Consequently, the agricultural negotiations taking place within the WTO raise a number of important issues. The main advantage sought by developing countries in entering the multilateral trade system lies within the creation of a fairer and less distorted farming market. The Agriculture Agreement produced by the Uruguay Round aims precisely towards this goal. But does this agreement provide the adequate legal frame for tackling the issue of development in emerging countries? The drafting of the Special and Differential Treatment Provisions created the path for the introduction of a legal principle consisting in granting a country rights and obligations in proportion with its level of development. The Doha negotiations launched in 2001 promoted this idea through the Doha Development Agenda. But the Agriculture Agreement, while aiming at the liberalization of world agricultural trade, favored the legalization of protectionism policies used by developed countries. As a result, multilateral negotiations are hardly evolving and are caught in a deadlock situation. They should initially have come into end in 2005, but their deadline have been postponed many times. Indeed, the agricultural issue constitutes their stumbling block. As a consequence, the WTO faces the difficulty to conciliate two aims that seem antagonistic: the liberalization of world trade and the economical development of developing countries. The different actors participating, under the aegis of the WTO, in the multilateral trade negotiation have divergent thinking. The more different their position are, the harder the task of the WTO is. It is however within this institutional frame that the reform in farming product trade should take place.