Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-10-06-Speech-3-157"
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Mr President, Members of Parliament, those of you who requested the debate today on the subject of the Seattle Conference did not want, if I have understood correctly, an exchange of technical proposals but rather a political presentation. I think you are right. Public opinion in our countries clearly feels that the liberalisation of trade – in which we hope to enter a new phase – is part of a greater movement, which invites questions and interrogations and in relation to which we must therefore adopt a stance. So, let us ask the question quite bluntly, is internationalisation a good thing or a bad thing?
With internationalisation, the concentration of economic power and the extra-territorial impact of decisions taken on competition policy by states, competition presents all economies with challenges. But for developing countries the stakes are even more formidable. In this area, these countries face a twofold problem: their internal markets are too often cornered by monopolies or by oligopolies whose first effect is to inflict prices which are far too high on the local consumers, the mass of the very poorest in the main, and whose second effect is to prevent the arrival of newcomers and to force them to confine themselves to the informal economy. Restrictive practices in access to markets, credit and energy are among the main causes – generally not acknowledged by us – of underdevelopment, of the perpetuation of social inequality and corruption in these countries. The inclusion of competition on the WTO agenda is not intended to transform the WTO into a world authority on competition but simply to establish a body of principles and procedures intended to promote the implementation of internal competition policies and to make them mutually compatible.
Let us look at three more subjects, protection of the environment, consumer health and the audio-visual sector which, beyond the tensions between technical progress and cultural traditions, refer back to the features of civilisation which characterise Europe – the demand for quality, food quality, for example, cultural identity in an open world, the preference for the non-commercial in a number of areas.
It is evident that we suffer, in this respect, from a lack of regulations and procedures, and indeed primarily, I must say, in our own countries. The European Union has undertaken to define policies for the protection of the environment, health and food safety. Indeed yesterday, right here, Romano Prodi committed the Commission to a fundamental revision of food legislation by 2002. Everyone knows the complexity of these questions, involving scientific knowledge, with its share of uncertainties, national legislation and the WTO procedures. We are all aware of the problem presented by the interface between national standards, WTO regulations and those of the other multilateral agreements on the subject of the environment or health protection. With the new round, we must, on the one hand, prevent any abuse of these gaps and differences with a protectionist purpose and, on the other hand, stop leaving the arbitration between competitive national standards to market forces. The precautionary principle must serve as our safety valve to adjust for scientific uncertainty. Furthermore, progress in the labelling and traceability of products, indissolubly linked, would serve to better inform the judgement of the consumer. European opinion also considers it necessary to reinforce the capacity for artistic creation within the audio-visual media, a key sector in our culture, and the Union must respond to this expectation.
I come finally to the issues which most polarise opinion today and our Member States’ Governments, to wit, the link between commercial liberalisation and the progress in the fundamental rights of workers. For the European Union, it is evident that these objectives are not only compatible but also, in our experience, deeply coherent. In Europe, the return to free trade since the post-war period has been accompanied by social progress in which the relations between productivity and collective negotiation have been the two main driving forces. In raising this question, then, our intention is by no means to open up the possibility of setting wage standards or to bear down on the comparative advantages of developing countries, as Mr Sasi said so well just now. We have, in addition, become particularly sensitive to the risk of protectionist abuse that the unilateral imposition of social standards would entail, potentially. Nor do we wish to make the WTO the forum for the drawing up of these standards, for which the International Labour Organisation is responsible. Our only concern is to achieve progress in the observance, by our partners, of fundamental social standards, as defined at the Copenhagen Summit for Social Development in parallel with progress in the liberalisation of trade. In Seattle, we must therefore attempt to convince developing countries of the political legitimacy of this objective and the interest which social progress offers in their own development.
If I have referred several times already to developing countries, it is for two reasons. Firstly, because the chief target of this new round of negotiations is indeed sustainable development and this is primarily of concern to developing countries. Next, because, in order to achieve our own objectives within this round, we need the consensus of all our partners and, of course, of developing countries. But it is self-evident that this round must be included in the wider context of global government. Henceforth a stronger and stricter connection must be ensured between the new pillar of the international system, the WTO, and the pillar already formed by the Bretton Woods institutions.
Mr President, Members of Parliament, this debate on the new round which you requested leads to a question of great importance, in my view. Does the Union, by means of its own action, offer the governments and citizens of Europe any additional means to adjust successfully and gain control of internationalisation? Do we have the will, by exploiting our position and our weight in the world economy, the institutional advances which we have achieved, to regain the sovereignty, which world markets rob us of occasionally, and to contribute to effective global government? If the response from the Council and from Parliament is positive, our negotiating position will be stronger. This will mean, in fact, that we are capable of gaining support for our views and transforming the fears we perceive here and there into a meaningful project. My wish is that one day, your legislature will be called upon to give an opinion on the results of this new round, entailing a great deal of work and not a little dialogue for us all. Once again I undertake, on behalf of the Commission, to pursue this dialogue with you, on an ongoing basis, in the months and years to come.
In the Commission’s view, it is positive, for at least three reasons. In the first place, the internationalisation of markets makes the economies of scale possible, which are essential to the industrial revolutions in progress within information technology, biotechnology and transport. These are the advances which should make it possible to reconcile demographic growth and economic growth with a limited pool of natural resources, for it is technological progress which pushes back the frontier of the long-term use of these resources.
In the second place, it is access to our markets and the liberalisation of direct investments which have supported the industrialisation successfully initiated in South-East Asia, opening up new and growing outlets for our own exports and demonstrating that there are strategies to overcome underdevelopment. It was also the successes achieved, thanks to liberalisation of trade, by industrialised countries and emergent economies in Asia which shook the confidence of the communist regimes and led to their radical transformation both in Europe and in Asia.
Finally, internationalisation comes back to the perceptions of the rising generations, those of the next century, who, through the media and through their own wandering, will experience the world as the global village where mutual dependence entails solidarity and where the taste for differences and for encounters can be expressed.
Of course, I do not intend to confine myself to a lyrical and idyllic vision of internationalisation here. Like a number of you, I can perceive the costs and the risks of free trade without regulations and without strong multilateral institutions to control it. I can see inequalities gaining ground to the extent of creating social exclusion in our countries. I can see the growing divide between continents. I can see the instability of the financial markets. I can see the threats to the local and the planetary environment. But if our role here is to reflect the concerns, the questions and the expectations of our fellow citizens in Europe, let us keep in mind the world-wide dimension of what is at stake, those of developing countries divided today between the hope of integration into the world economy and the fear of marginalisation. Our responsibility is also to separate millenarian fears and resistance to change from the opportunities to be grasped in internationalisation for growth, human development and the protection of the environment. Through the new cycle of negotiation, what we are preparing is the multilateral organisation of the world markets of the 21st century, with the firm intention of achieving better balance.
You know the reasons which induced the Commission to propose a long agenda and a short schedule for Seattle to the Council and to your House. Although I am jumping onto the bandwagon, liberalisation by means of rounds of negotiations rather than through the routine WTO channels seems to me to be advisable for three reasons. Firstly, à la carte liberalisation just does not work. Real progress requires a comprehensive approach and a single ultimate commitment. That does not mean that we cannot quickly garner the first agreements as they come to ripeness. Secondly, new subjects must be integrated into the WTO missions, subjects contributed by society, such as the environment, culture, health, food, and also competition and investment, henceforth an integral part of international trade. Thirdly, the world economy needs direction, after the financial crises which emerging and transitional economies have experienced over the last two years. A round of negotiations thus seems the safest defence against the temptation of protectionism.
Let us quickly go into these points in further detail. In our position – as the Council President has just rightly mentioned – there is first and foremost the concern of the Union not to get caught up in the sectorial negotiation, enshrined in the conclusions of the Uruguay Round, concerned only with agriculture and services. Our strategy is to make negotiation more balanced by opening it up to all sectors, so as to cover our offensive and defensive interests and to persuade our partners – particularly, developing countries – to do the same. As regards agriculture, the orientations provided by the European Council in Berlin on Agenda 2000 give us a solid basis to achieve, in the field of liberalisation, progress which is compatible with the European agricultural model.
There is then the concern to define the rules and consolidate the institution of the WTO, so as to strengthen its multilateral nature, to improve the impact of internationalisation on sustainable development and prevent the risks to the environment and to health inherent in unrestricted competition, between different national standards and different levels of production. These regulations concern investment and competition primarily, two areas where some of our partners show a certain reluctance, for very different reasons, and which, given the precedent of the MAI – I prefer to spell it out A.M.I. (rather than call it friend “AMI”) in French – give rise to reservations on the part of some developing countries and reluctance, even outright hostility, in some of our non-governmental organisations.
Allow me to expand briefly on these two subjects. On the matter of investment, let us be clear: we are not looking to impose our own investment codes, the ones which predominate in our countries and which suit us, on developing countries. We hope to convince them by means of negotiation that the most effective way for them to attract direct external investment, the special access route to technology and international markets, is first to create a safe and predictable framework for foreign investors, whether they come from industrialised countries or from other emergent nations."@en1
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