France found itself totally isolated
at a European Union Council of Ministers meeting in Geneva as all 24 fellow members refused to follow its opposition to a new WTO package, participants said.
The loner status came after EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy briefed ministers from the 25-nation bloc on a revised draft proposal to relaunch the so-called Doha round of trade negotiations by the end of the week.
Jan Brinkhorst, minister of economy for the Netherlands, which holds the rotating EU presidency, "asked if anyone had a problem with the substance and the only (minister) to raise a hand was from France," recalled one of the participants.
The meeting on the sidelines of a gathering of the World Trade Organisation in this Swiss city illustrated France's isolation as the 25 EU countries attempted to find a common position to help build the consensus needed among the WTO's 147 member states to advance the multi-billion-dollar trade round.
"We do see a definite improvement in the revised text," Brinkhorst told a news conference afterwards.
At the heart of the council "there is a very big support for the European position in the European Commission (news - web sites)," Brinkhorst said.
An EU source accused the French of "playing the procedural game because they do not have the support required to block an agreement."
At the meeting, which ran from 9:00 am (0700 GMT) until 12:30 pm, France's representatives -- the minister of external trade, Francois Loos, and of agriculture, Herve Gaymard, raised procedural matters rather than sharing their opinions on the substance of the negotiations, several witnesses said.
Loos demanded that ministers listen to the European council's top lawyer, shipped in for the occasion from Brussels, about how they should act if Lamy wanted to submit an accord, insisting that an agreement could only be made by a unanimous vote.
But references by the French minister to "numerous procedural problems" met rebukes from his European counterparts, who urged him to drop the subject.
"I am a lawyer. We can spend hours debating judicial problems but what we need to discuss is the strong political position that we must adopt," declared Germany's economy minister Wolfgang Clement, according to a participant.
The council's advocate launched into a discussion on the intricate legal process before being cut short by one minister who pointed out that this issue had not officially been raised.
Brinkhorst instructed everyone except the ministers and their closest aides to leave the room as a leading French figure arrived on the scene.
"I want to see the minister now because I have a plane to catch in half an hour," declared Jean-Michel Lemetayer, president of the FNSEA, the main French agricultural organisation.
Despite the urgency of the high-level talks, Gaymard found a few minutes to speak to him.
Summing up the discussion, the Dutch presidency said another council meeting would be called if and when it was deemed necessary, though one British delegate said there would be no need.
As for Brinkhorst, he quipped: "We have a chairman of the board, that is me, and a chief executive, that is Pascal Lamy, and we know exactly how we work together."
Ultimately when it comes to reaching an agreement, "the EU would stand united."
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