"Progress on removal of subsidies can come only if the roadmap for market access on farms goods and industrial goods is indicated by US, Brazil and India," EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson said even as he declared the EU's openness for a Swiss tariff reduction formula with two coefficients, a demand of the US and developing countries like India.
Under the Swiss formula, which is linear in nature, higher tariffs are cut more than the lower tariffs. It was first proposed by a Swiss diplomat in Geneva but has undergone modifications since.
Mandelson said, "For valuable progress here we need to ready the building blocks of modalities which would be the launch pad for final negotiations early next year."
In a veiled criticism of India and Brazil, he said while all discussions were on the basis of the Swiss formula on line-by-line reductions, when it came to making actual offers nobody came forward.
India has said it was ready to reduce two thirds of its tariffs of industrial goods basing the cuts on the principle of less than full reciprocity only after EU spelled out its offer on the coefficient.
