EU trade ministers yesterday approved a negotiating mandate for the Singapore World Trade Organisation (WTO) ministerial conference in Singapore in December, but significantly watered down Commission proposals on minimum labour standards.

The EU Trade Commissioner, Sir Leon Brittan, described the agreement on the mandate as an important sign that the Union could work cohesively in the WTO to provide leadership on world trade liberalisation. He said he hoped the conference would lay the basis for a world trade round in 1999.

He also pointed to the EU's willingness to explore the possibility of a WTO agreement on investment as being of particular significance.

The labour standards issue has alarmed Asian and developing countries who see European attempts to raise it as a form of protectionism.

They have had considerable support from the British and Sir Leon, who insist that trade talks are not a vehicle through which labour standards can be improved.

The Commission, largely at the instigation of the Social Affairs Commissioner, Mr Padraig Flynn, had proposed that Singapore would establish a working group to examine how to monitor adherence to basic standards set in the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The approach is strongly backed by the French and Benelux countries and by many non-governmental organisations working in the Third World, which argue that the opportunity should be taken to tackle issues like child and slave labour.

Yesterday, the meeting, chaired by the Tanaiste, Mr Spring, agreed to an Irish compromise text that simply urges the conference to address "the role of trade liberalisation in increasing living standards worldwide and, in this context, the importance that member states attach to the efforts of the ILO to promote the better definition and universal observance of core labour standards".

The Benelux countries will attach a declaration to the decision calling for the WTO to explore with the ILO how to promote fundamental labour standards.

The British minister, Mr Anthony Nelson, said that Britain had "won" the argument and said the talks would not now be sidetracked from trade to peripheral issues.