The 11th biennial ministerial conference of the World Trade Organization in Buenos Aires, Argentina failed to deliver any concrete results. As EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström bluntly stated, “[W]e failed to achieve all our objectives, and did not achieve any multilateral outcome.”

The main areas of contention were agriculture and fisheries, involving the failure to agree on modalities to protect developing countries’ ability to ensure their populations’ food security through public purchase and stockpiling of foodstuffs and the failure to agree to ban subsidies for illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing, respectively.

Please click here for more information on the conference.