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Mobile Phone Market "Crucial" Point as Lamy Returns for WTO Talks
Access to the Chinese telecom market will be a key point when EU trade negotiator Pascal Lamy goes to Beijing next week to resume talks on entry by China into the World Trade Organiation, Lamy said on Thursday.
Access for European interests to the mobile phone market would be a central matter, he said.
"Telecoms is a very complex matter," he told a press briefing, adding that the 50 percent of the Chinese telecom market that the US secured in its talks with China was "fine with us."
"What they (the US) did not get is something of this kind on mobile phone service, on which we are insisting," he said. "Of course telecom is a crucial point to us, there are a few others, where our competitive advantage is quite different from the US."
"As to whether this is going to be the final round, I hope it will be," said Lamy. "That is what the Chinese want, in any case."
On Monday Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji urged the EU to quicken the pace on bilateral talks on China's accession to the WTO.
"We hope to finish all the negotiations and relevant procedures as soon as possible, and we would not like to see that the European Union (EU) will be the last to reach an agreement with China in this regard," Zhu said.
"That's fine with us," Lamy said, adding that "political constraints" as well as trade considerations were sensitive points in the talks.
"What I call political constraints on the Chinese side is basically the inter-relational between trade opening and a number of difficult changes in the Chinese system, such as ownership...state trade...limits which are either geographic or substantive for a number of activities," said Lamy.
"On a number of these things it's not a trade issue, it's a political issue," said Lamy.
The EU is the largest of China's trading partners yet to conclude a bilateral agreement that would open the way for China to accede to the WTO and its rules-based trading regime.
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