Who exactly is included on the list of emerging economies?
Like civil society, the EC would also like to see objective criteria applied on emerging economies and have a clearer idea of which countries this refers to, but according to the DG Trade representative, developing countries have not expressed political readiness to come to an agreement on such criteria. There is an overall idea of what countries are included, but there are also points of divergence. The EC thinks that too many countries, like India and China, are asking for protectionist measures, despite having the capacity to engage in trade. To roughly illustrate his point, the EC representative ran through a list of numbers: the gross domestic product (GDP) of a number of countries which the EC says are considered to be developing countries, is close or above that of the EU25. These include such countries as the United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and Bahrain. However, as a civil society representative later pointed out, the countries on the list include oil produci
