Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-12-13-Speech-1-063"
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"en.19991213.3.1-063"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, the failure of the Seattle negotiations represents a victory for all those who reject free trade, all those who refuse to reduce the activities of the human race, and the human race itself, to the condition of a saleable commodity.
The Union for a Europe of Nations Group had deplored in this House the lack of preparation for this conference, the lack of an objective assessment of the Uruguay Round, the sly attempt to reintroduce the Multilateral Agreement on Investment in a roundabout way, the objective of fast-track liberalisation, without recognition of the legitimacy of regional preference areas.
The Seattle demonstrators put an end to this sidelong drift. They stopped a conference prepared by the powerful chiefly for their own benefit and thereby obtained the moratorium which is precisely what my group was asking for. We are delighted with this, but now we must use this moratorium to prepare ourselves better for future negotiations.
Firstly, as regards procedure, we want careful thought to be given, in the European Parliament and in the Council, to the democratic supervision of the Commission during such international negotiations. We cannot forget that Mr Lamy, in a Commission statement not approved by the Council, proposed a working party on biotechnology, risking bringing this subject back into the negotiations as the Americans wanted, even though we rejected this.
The Commission has explained just now, and also last week before the European Parliament’s Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development, that he hoped to receive far more in return for making this concession. This statement is not at all satisfactory to us and, in our opinion, he is just making things worse for himself, since, in our opinion, this point specifically was not at all open to negotiation. Fortunately, in the end, Seattle was a failure, because otherwise who knows where they were going to take us.
As was ever its wont, the Commission thinks itself above the Council and seeks to do just what it wishes. This must be changed. It must be changed all the more in consideration of the fact that the Commission had obtained a broad mandate for negotiation on the agenda, including matters such as investment and services, which are normally the prerogative of Member States. We consider that this point, too, is one that must be clarified properly in future, since it could have drifted towards a final negotiating mandate which would have reduced or eliminated the responsibilities of national parliaments. In future negotiations, on the contrary much stricter parallel control by national parliaments and by the European Parliament must be instituted. Supervision of the Commission must thus be reformed, but we must also take advantage of this time which has been given us to draw up a proper objective assessment of the Uruguay Round.
Above all, in future, the running of the World Trade Organisation must be reviewed in order to establish the fundamental principle that only peoples have sovereign power, that they are free to choose their lifestyle and to express their preferences, and, finally, that multinationals must adapt in order to comply with the will of the people, rather than the people adapting to comply with the needs of the multinationals."@en1
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