Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-11-18-Speech-4-165"
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"en.19991118.7.4-165"2
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"Like all my colleagues, I voted against Mr Schwaiger’s report.
As our chairman, Mr Pasqua, specified in the course of the general debate which took place during the part-session at the beginning of October, and as my colleague, Mr Berthu, has just mentioned, it is essential, before undertaking a new round of negotiations, to make a clear and specific assessment, one that is objective, and thus independent and takes into account the views of both sides, in order to determine the economic, social, environmental and food safety-related consequences of the previous agreements of the Uruguay Round. But we observe that, unfortunately, the Council has just given the Commission its negotiating mandate to go to Seattle, and this makes no mention of any such assessment. When pushed, they are prepared to undertake a study, only a very limited one, on sustainability, but nothing to do with the preservation of our economic and social identities.
The failure to carry out an assessment may be analysed as the wish to hide the very mixed reality of the effects of the deregulation of world trade from the peoples of WTO member countries. In the course of the years of the Uruguay Round, European agriculture has undergone the most significant reduction in workforce that it has ever known, thus causing the virtual breakdown of rural society. A number of developing countries are starting to suffer from the head-on competition to which agricultural products of the Latin America zone and of the Africa zone are subject. In the industrial sector, the concentration of some operators brings about situations of dominance over some markets, and small and medium-sized businesses (most particularly those which form the rural fabric of our country), bear the brunt of the unfair competition produced by the relocation of some multinational, or even transnational, enterprises.
While the need to defend a given European farm model is being asserted, we are avoiding giving it a precise definition by means of Community preference, autonomy in terms of foodstuffs and public health protection. It is essential to define very quickly a European farm model based on diversified, traditional and healthy food, produced from essentially European agricultural products. The principle of Community preference must be defended and, by the same token, the system of export refunds including for products described as “outside annex 1”, i.e. food products produced from European agricultural products whose market price is higher than the world rate.
The provision of healthy foodstuffs means that the primacy of the precautionary principle should be clearly established in the context of these negotiations. This aspect of fair trade based on the absence of dumping for quality, environmental, social and fiscal reasons, if it is mentioned at all among the principles, is not asserted, with all the consequences of this, as a priority objective for European negotiators to attain. The prime objective for the Europeans, if you listen to the Commission, would be to get ready to make concessions. And indeed that is what the Commission is already doing, even before the negotiations have started, to the detriment of vital European interests.
I am extremely worried about the European Commission’s attitude. Indeed, following the Uruguay Round negotiations, we have had a few conflicts with the American authorities. The three main conflicts concerning the banana sector, the production and the incorporation of genetically modified organisms, and the importation of American beef, have all been negotiated by the Commission itself, against the interests of European and ACP banana growers, against the interests of European consumers and, of course, against the interests of our farmers and producers.
The Commission has acted and is continuing to act in these three case as if it wishes to ensure that there will be no outstanding disputes between the European Union and the United States when the negotiations are due to begin. This is playing into the Americans’ hands. Instead of proclaiming the need for European concessions from the rooftops, the Commission would do better to forcefully assert the need to set right the errors and omissions of the Marrakech Agreement with regard to fundamental social rights, the environment, public health, in the general interest, indeed. But this would mean acknowledging that the Commission handled the latest GATT agreements badly, and obviously that is just unthinkable. The Commission therefore prefers, whether its representative is called Mr Brittan or Mr Lamy, to undermine our positions in advance regarding the precautionary principle, health safety and environmental protection, as well as economic interests in rural areas and, in the case of bananas, to make light of the special historic relations which our countries maintain in the form of international agreements with the ACP countries. Special, do not even think about it. The adjective is one that will make Mr Lamy jump with fright!"@en1
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