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Keeping Markets Open

January 26, 2008

In an interview with Deutsche Welle, World Bank President Robert Zoellick said that industrialized countries had to open their markets to products from the developing world in order to achieve the UN millennium goals.

https://p.dw.com/p/CxlS
Robert Zoellick
Zoellick become World Bank president in July 2007Image: AP

Speaking on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, the former US trade representative said that the UN goal of cutting world hunger by half by 2015 could only be reached by curbing European protectionism.

"Europe and other countries are increasingly using hygienic norms to exclude products," Zoellick said, adding that this could be seen as a new form of protectionism. "Of course we need an open market without quotas and tariff agreements."

Zoellick also said that agricultural subsidies in the West had to be cut in order to boost agricultural products from developing countries.

Click on the video link below to watch the entire interview!