Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-10-06-Speech-3-159"
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"en.19991006.6.3-159"2
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"Mr Vice-President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the development of world trade in the last 50 years is a success story. In the last 50 years, trade throughout the world has increased by a factor of 17, and has expanded by more than twice the level of macroeconomic production. Increased prosperity and the creation of jobs in Europe are an important consequence of this. Freer and fairer world trade within the framework of a strengthened multilateral world trade system formed a successful foundation for this. Progress to an exceptional extent and at an exceptional rate in the globalisation of real activity now makes further development of this multilateral body of regulations, which was based on GATT and is now the World Trade Organisation, the WTO, imperative.
The focus of the Millennium Round is this objective. A comprehensive European Union Strategy, which embraces all the areas concerned in a dynamic way is being proposed by the Commission and, I feel I can already say this as a rapporteur, is widely supported within the European Parliament. We are defending the European Agricultural Model, food production, the maintenance of farms as family businesses, preservation of the countryside and environmental protection in equal measure.
This Millennium Round should not be characterised by a defensive attitude towards the American position on imports of agricultural and genetically modified products into the European Union. Instead, the European Union should be finding confederates for its dynamic global strategy. The usefulness of globalisation should be measured against its usefulness to the regions and nations of the world equally, so that a better balance is achieved between the interests of the European Union, of the other European States, of the USA, of other industrial countries, and newly industrialised and developing countries. The framework now available to us, established with the World Trade Organisation in 1995, must be developed further in this direction and its instruments must be perfected. The essential bases for negotiations and solutions mentioned in the Commission document of July 1999 have so far met with a predominantly positive response in our discussions within the Committee on Industry, External Trade, Research and Energy.
Today, I would like to touch briefly on our guidelines for content. In November, we have the opportunity to discuss this again in detail. Our draft resolution will predominantly include the dynamic elements which the President of the Council and also Commissioner Lamy have already mentioned and which will include our ideas on the improved incorporation of financial services, on investment and competition policy within the framework of the WTO, on the further reduction of duties on industrial products and on the improved integration, indeed the “mainstreaming”, of environmental and consumer protection in the body of regulations of the World Trade Organisation and vice versa. The protection of copyright must be improved in many developing countries. Labour standards should be taken into account more in the world trade system, and our markets must be opened more to developing countries.
There are still, however, some outstanding questions regarding the cooperation between the Council and the Commission, on the one hand, and with the European Parliament, on the other hand, within the scope of the Millennium Round. Let me stress one thing at the outset. The European Parliament gratefully accepts this dialogue with the Commission and hopes that this dialogue will also include the Council. It will represent its position within the framework of its resolution, which will certainly be adopted in November, in an energetically coherent but also responsible manner. You can assume, Mr Sasi, as President-in-Office of the Council, and Mr Lamy, as Commissioner, that in the position determined in our November resolution we will present ourselves as energetic and coherent both to you and to our partners in the Millennium Round. We shall strive thereby to be true to our responsibility as the elected representatives of the peoples of Europe.
Secondly, we are assuming, a previously justified assumption, that the Commission and the Council are representing the interests of the European Union with equal coherence. The strength of the European Union as the largest trading power in the world resides in its joint position, which is represented by all elements. We are therefore somewhat concerned to hear rumours that in the Council, even before the start of negotiations, some delegations are now ..."@en1
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