Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-07-03-Speech-2-171"
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"en.20010703.9.2-171"2
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".
With regard to the first point of your question, Mrs Kauppi, I am, of course, responsible for applying the policies that the European Union has decided upon, including those taken on external issues. It is my duty, and I think that I do this openly, to explain that, when a political decision taken by the European Union brings us into conflict with our international commitments, as would be the case here, then the people who are taking this decision must be made aware of the risks they are taking. If you want to run this risk, do so. I will handle it. Incidentally, I believe that there are more intelligent, less risky ways of resolving this issue.
In particular, we could consider a compromise solution between our proposal to ban testing and your position to ban marketing, in other words, that of labelling requirements. From the point of view of international trade legislation, these requirements present less of a risk than a ban on marketing. If we could move in this direction, in order to bring together both our points of view, I believe that we would avoid provoking useless disputes.
My second point relates to our desire to have some of the WTO rules clarified, in order to allow the European Union to move in the direction that it wishes, and this concerns production methods, for example. We hope to move in this direction since we are relatively isolated at the moment. One of the reasons for this is that we are faced with the belief of some of the developing countries that the use of these production methods may equate to protectionist measures. We are, therefore, in need of some very strong arguments in order to show that this matter is not about protection, it is a matter of collective preference and that we each have our own ethics. Within the European Union, animal welfare is part of our ethics, although this is not necessarily the case in other countries – as we can see – and perception varies according to the level of development.
This is our position. We will do everything that we can so that this issue is placed on the agenda of the next round of negotiations, so that progress can be made. I make no secret of the fact that, at the moment, our position is hardly shared at all in other parts of the world."@en1
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