Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-04-13-Speech-4-020"
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"en.20000413.2.4-020"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, I am speaking for our ‘shadow’ rapporteur, Mr Vatanen, and I would like to mention that this is now the fifth time since 1993 and the introduction of the common organisation of the market in bananas that the WTO has considered the Community rules to run counter to international trade regulations. The banana controversy is a good example of how hard it is to reconcile the interests of the fifteen Member States, the Union, the ACP banana producing countries, European consumers and our trading partners. I congratulate the Commission for striving to reach a compromise that has regard to the various interest groups.
It is right that the European Union should bear responsibility for seeing that European agricultural producers, including banana producers, earn a sufficient income. It is not right, however, that the EU and businesses operating within its territory should suffer annual losses of around EUR 400 million because of trade sanctions by the USA and Ecuador, which are a result of our violating the GATT agreement with regard to banana imports.
I would like to express my concern regarding the consequences of Mr Dary’s report for trade policy. To adopt the report as it is could result in a strong reaction from our trading partners, as it does not even include the possibility of talks to ease access to the market. There is strong evidence that some Latin American countries will refuse to accept import quotas – at least not without the prospect of better access to EU markets. For this reason, I would appeal to you to support Mr Chichester’s Amendment No 38, which states that if the EU does not abolish import quotas it will at least indicate its intention to start official WTO talks on the future distribution of import quotas.
The Union has lost the banana dispute in the WTO four times already and it cannot afford to lose a fifth time, for three reasons. Firstly, the continuation, despite the bans by the WTO, of the EU’s import quota system, which has been found to be discriminatory will lead to the continuance of trade sanctions costing hundreds of millions of euros. Secondly, if our trading partners receive permission from the WTO to even disregard intellectual property rights, the costs of sanctions will be enormous and could cause long-term damage to EU businesses. Thirdly, continued breaches of the regulations will hurt our image internationally in matters of trade, which might weaken the case for the European agricultural subsidy model. This, meanwhile, would have very serious consequences for the whole of European agriculture. It is high time we showed ourselves to be credible and mature trading partners, as waking up to the realities of the present will accord with our real interests in the long term."@en1
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