Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-12-13-Speech-1-055"
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"en.19991213.3.1-055"2
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".
Madam President, the Seattle Conference ended in failure. Why? I can see two circumstantial reasons and one intrinsic reason. The circumstances are familiar to you. Firstly, the conference failed due to lack of time. Only Friday afternoon remained, i.e. too little time to come to a conclusion within a reasonable period. This can be explained by the way the conference itself was run, since it did not enable any real negotiation until the last two days. There was also, another circumstantial reason, a manifest inability on the part of some delegations to engage in a real process of negotiation on the order of business and, in this respect, one has to wonder if the fact that the opening of the conference coincided with the launching of the election campaign in the United States was a good thing. It indeed appeared that this country was scarcely prepared to shift position on any subject whatsoever, which by definition makes it hard to conclude negotiations successfully.
As for the intrinsic reason, I believe that the failure of the conference can be explained by the gap between the ambitions of the World Trade Organisation and its resources. WTO procedures proved to be inappropriate to the simultaneous requirement to integrate new parties, i.e. an increasing number of developing countries who are demanding their place around the table, and new subjects, which goes beyond our traditional agenda. These new subjects are ones that you are aware of: the environment, social standards, for example. Considering the number of parties and subjects involved and the fundamental differences between a number of participants, the chances of arriving at an agreement were extremely slim.
If we dwell for a moment on this intrinsic reason, I believe it must be acknowledged that the WTO must no longer henceforth supervise the negotiation of liberalisation between industrialised countries and that this order has been changed in two ways: firstly, it is no longer possible to limit ourselves to lowering some tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade. We must concern ourselves with the impact of this liberalisation on the main parameters of our development models, the fundamental rights of workers, environmental and health protection, cultural diversity, multifunctionality in agriculture and quality of the environment. Secondly, it is no longer possible to circumscribe negotiation to just a few participants, the Union and its friends, the United States and the Cairns group. In Seattle, it was necessary, more than in the past, to take into account the chief third world partners, India, Brazil, South Africa, Egypt, plus the emerging economies, particularly in South East Asia, and also our partners, the ACP countries. Tomorrow, we shall probably also have to take China into account. The combination of new subjects and new participants opens up very good prospects of progressing towards controlled globalisation, but the difficulty of such an enterprise is readily apparent.
As far as the issues were concerned, the Union had made good preparations for Seattle, advocating a broad agenda which complied with the expectations of society, and which was championed by Parliament, the elected body, the legitimate representative of this society. In addition to extending the negotiations to all the partners, including developing countries, the European Union also took the initiative to open up the conference by means of an offer to guarantee the least advanced countries broad zero-duty access to the markets of the industrialised countries. It succeeded in aligning, first, Japan with this initiative, and then also perhaps the United States and Canada. But let us make no mistake and let us keep our eyes open wide. In return for their support of our agenda in terms of society, the environment, health and workers’ rights, developing countries with average revenue and emerging economies are going to be asking for substantial improvements in access to our markets. And Seattle has demonstrated that we still had to convince these countries that our concerns, your concerns, are something other than reflexes in defence of our own well-being which often seems so much of a privilege to them.
Let me just briefly mention the European Union’s strategy in Seattle. The Community is well positioned to build bridges between the positions of industrialised countries and developing countries. We showed this clearly at Seattle, where we were well prepared both politically and in terms of content and we enjoyed the support, the precious support, I believe, of both the Council and of Parliament. We remained united and, at the same time, open. Occasionally, we shifted position if it was deemed necessary in order to move the negotiations on. This was the case, for example, regarding the biotechnology group, which I considered appropriate to accept at a certain time. This gave rise to sharp criticism from some Member States, and indeed from some Members of Parliament. I take full responsibility for the risk"@en1
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