France has reportedly called an extraordinary meeting of European Union trade ministers to discuss EU trade negotiating strategy in the World Trade Organization’s floundering Doha round of trade talks.

France takes over the EU’s rotating presidency on 1st July for six months, inconvenient timing considering that the WTO’s Director-General Pascal Lamy has called a July 21st meeting of around 30 trade ministers from key countries in a last-ditch effort to cobble together a deal. The political calendar (a U.S. presidential election in November 2008, followed by a brand-new European Commission and Indian elections in 2009) means that no deal in July likely means no deal until 2010.

France has been a long-standing irritant to the Doha round and President Sarkozy, despite his sometimes-promising rhetoric, has not been the free-market reformer we might have hoped for. I wrote previously on his hostility towards the Doha round, and he has reportedly seized on Ireland’s rejection of the Lisbon treaty as a signal that Europe’s strategy in the WTO needs to change.

Of course, a liberalizing result in the Doha round is not necessary for lower trade barriers (see here and here, for example), bit it certainly would be welcome.