Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-09-06-Speech-3-400"
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"en.20000906.5.3-400"2
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"The partnership between the EU and the southern Mediterranean States comprises a range of positive elements. It should be further developed and deepened. However, the report on the reform of the MEDA programme does not set the right tone on a number of counts.
The European Union is fixated with the idea of concluding free trade agreements with the southern Mediterranean countries, although, paradoxically, they only have a one-sided liberalising effect. Such agreements have a particularly negative impact on the financially disadvantaged, as existing free trade agreements have shown. The report concedes that free trade agreements carry this risk. Why else would it describe, and call for, support measures, with a view to alleviating the negative impact of free trade?
If the risks attending the free trade strategy are acknowledged, but it is pursued nevertheless, then the social, environmental and cultural components of the programme will only ever have repair and damage limitation status, when they ought to be the guiding principle for such agreements.
Furthermore, in order to qualify for subsidies, the MEDA countries must satisfy the Bretton Woods institutions (for example the IMF). These self-same programmes are notorious for having anti-social strategies directed purely at liberalisation.
The aim of the EU-Mediterranean partnership must be to redress the balance between the northern and southern regions of the Mediterranean area, improve people’s quality of life and promote understanding between the inhabitants of the various regions. But if free trade becomes the guiding principle, these goals will become nothing more than window dressing, and a handful of wealthy people will once again be the ones to benefit.
I also protest against the fact that the EU-Mediterranean partnership is being misused as an instrument in order to prevent people from migrating from this region to the EU. For a while now, the European Union has had the ‘fight against illegal immigration’ and the ‘repatriation of ‘illegal’ refugees written as objectives into treaties with the Mediterranean States, as well as into every agreement with one or more third countries. In this way, each individual agreement adds one more brick to fortress Europe. This report is another example of the EU policy of pulling up the drawbridge where immigrants and refugees are concerned. The countries of the southern Mediterranean region have been declared as the forecourts to fortress Europe. It is their duty to ensure that ‘undesirable persons’ do not get into the EU. I ask myself how the EU can insist on the partner states in the Mediterranean showing respect for human rights and the freedom of the individual, when it does not respect the rights of immigrants itself, gives these people illegal status and wants to keep them away from Europe at any price, even if it leads to their being killed. This report safeguards, once again, the free movement of goods, services and capital. Once again, freedom and human rights are trampled underfoot. I will therefore vote against it, despite the fact that it contains a number of positive elements."@en1
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