Lamy with Jaitley in New Delhi on Monday. (AFP)

New Delhi, Jan. 19: India and the European Union today provided a new ray of hope for moving out of the Cancun cul de sac by relaunching a fresh round of WTO ministerial talks at Hong Kong later this year.

EU trade commissioner Pascal Lamy said, “We are now officially out of the post-Cancun era. Perhaps, we are in the pre-Hong Kong era, site of the next WTO ministerial which I hope will take place later this year.”

Lamy and Union commerce minister Arun Jaitley met this morning on a positive note to pave the way for relaunching the WTO talks.

Addressing a Confederation of Indian Industry (CII)-sponsored conference on ‘WTO: The road ahead’, Lamy said the EU was ready to adopt a more flexible approach and both the US and G-20 countries were also willing to return to the negotiating table. It is necessary to move ahead with urgency,” he added.

Jaitley said the year should not be wasted and if possible, a meeting should be organised in this year at Hong Kong. He further clarified that India’s stand on WTO issues would not be affected by the forthcoming elections. There is a national consensus on all these issues, he added.

Lamy said the EU was willing to offer concessions to developing countries like India in the agricultural and industrial sectors and would not seek “total openness” in these sectors.

Jaitley drove home the point that agriculture was the main issue for India as over 650 million people depended on it for their livelihood and these subsistence farmers could not compete with western farmers.

Lamy said the EU was ready to slash its import tariffs by one-thirds and reduce trade-distorting farm support by half. However, it “would not agree to totally dismantle the common agricultural policy (CAP) as like India we believe agriculture is different from the other sectors. It is intimately tied up with how we run our rural economy, society and landscape”.

Lamy said the EU was willing to ensure that access at zero duty should be applied to at least 50 per cent of their agricultural imports from developing countries and was also willing to allow developing countries special safeguards for crops that were key to food security.

He further said the EU was willing to offer a rebate to developing countries like India on the industrial market access issue and would not seek “total openness in this area” in the form of zero duties but a serious effort to reduce tariffs across the board.

He hailed the recent Saarc move towards a South Asia Free Trade Area (Safta) as a step that would ultimately lead towards a more liberal global trade. Lamy said the EU was disappointed on India’s preliminary offer of opening up the services sector in areas like legal services, retail distribution and accountancy.