The Doha Development Agenda

As the globalization goes further, the importance of international trade increases as well, not only as an instrument of reaching welfare but as a way to solve problems, too. The World Trade Organization (WTO) tries to put this approach into effect by means of liberalization. The current round of multilateral negotiations at the WTO that was launched in November 2001 in Qatar's capital Doha was to focus on developing countries. That is why it is usually called the Doha Development Agenda (DDA). The opponents claim, that the aspect of development is not strong enough, because developed countries do not want to make concessions (the main topic of this round are agricultural subsidies, harshly defended by the developed countries). The issue is the length of the round and constant postponing of the deadline to conclude DDA or even the absence of a credible classification of members according to their development phase. The original goal of this round lying in improvement of developing countries' situation in world trade is not being fulfilled and remains for the eights year almost unchanged