Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-05-17-Speech-3-152"
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"en.20000517.9.3-152"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, initiatives in favour of cancelling all or part of the third world debt are proliferating in the year 2000. On this subject, the Cairo Summit did not, any more than other summits, come up with any even remotely clear conclusion. This step is, however, a matter of simple common sense, and one is tempted to ask the Council whether they intend one day to refer the matter to their common sense.
The whole thing verges on the ridiculous. Not only do the countries of the south not have the financial resources to pay back their debts but, on top of that, the international economic order, which has foisted a demented concept of liberalism on the world, is preventing the majority of our partners in the south – I am thinking in particular of those in Northern Africa and sub-Saharan Africa – acceding to the conditions for development that is even remotely sustainable. Such conditions are continually demolished by the blind application of free trade, accompanied by the obsessive, ideological privatisation of the exploitation of most of their wealth. The rich countries, foolishly falling in line with the imperialist rules of the IMF and the World Bank, were nonetheless the first to realise that this cannot damage economic take-off since their own development did not fail on occasion to resort to the rules of protectionism, ensuring, moreover, a privileged place for the state and for public intervention in all its forms.
Peace between nations can only be achieved if there is balance. Political and economic balance are, on the other hand, devastating to a world which is increasingly unipolar. As we well know, despite the head-in-the-sand policy practised by rich countries with no thought for the future which takes the world down some highly dangerous roads, and while this House gets bogged down in details and side issues, it is high time that we were able to look at the world as a whole. Instead of leaving our only reasonable policy, i.e. the Lomé agreements, high and dry, we ought to be forming genuine economic and, more importantly, political partnerships with the Mediterranean and African countries. But, for that, Europe would have to have an authority legitimate and clear-sighted enough to get out of the trap of all-out liberalism and, of course, it has no such authority worthy of the name."@en1
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