Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-10-06-Speech-3-164"
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"en.19991006.6.3-164"2
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"Mr President of the Council, Mr President, Commissioner, the communication of the Commission to the national parliaments is extremely revealing with regard to the profoundly antidemocratic workings of the main European institution and of the conditions under which the new round of multilateral trade negotiations will be approached.
The Commission claims peremptorily that for 50 years, this GATT and WTO system has contributed to stability and the pursuit of economic growth, with all the advantages which result from them. A malicious mind may point out to the Commission that this phrase destroys our illusions since we thought – and God knows we have heard it enough times – that it was to the construction of Europe that we owe these fifty years of stability, economic growth and the peaceful settlement of disputes etc.. However, a purely curious mind may ask the Commission what it thinks of the continuous decline, decade after decade, of the average annual rate of growth in developed countries.
According to the OECD report, the average annual growth rate of OECD countries was +5.2% between 1961 and 1969, +3.9% between 1970 and 1979, +2.6% between 1980 and 1989 and +2.1% between 1990 and 1996. These statistics hardly support, and this is putting it mildly, the idea that the progressive dismantling of barriers to trade, after the eight rounds of negotiations from the early fifties until 1994, have favoured economic growth.
Would it be too much to ask the Commission to communicate to us the relevant economic studies on which it bases its current recommendation to proceed to a new round – as Mr Lamy has said – of dismantling? Would it be impertinent also to ask the Commission whether it has taken the care to ascertain whether the possible projections which it established on the launch of the Uruguay Round have been achieved? Could you give us written documents containing figures, sources and dates? It is, to say the least, strange that the Brussels Commission, at the point when it is inviting the Member States to give the green light to the immediate launch of the new round of multilateral trade negotiations, does not feel the need to make an appraisal of the WTO which is the least bit objective, particularly of its provisions for the settlement of disputes.
Is the Commission really more modest than our friends across the Atlantic who regularly weigh up the pros and cons of a procedure? Is this a procedure you hoped and prayed for? It is noticeable, furthermore, that in reality it is above all the Americans who achieve a certain degree of success within the system which has been put in place. I will not go on, given the short time allotted to me.
I would however like to say this: unless we are blind and have no idea what is being said and what is happening on the other side of the Atlantic, we cannot help but be struck dumb by the similarity between the terms used by the Commission and the words of President Clinton.
The opening of the new round of multilateral trade negotiations is first and foremost a decision of the President of the United States of America, who himself has set the tempo – I translate: accelerated negotiation, a tight agenda – and the objectives …."@en1
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