Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-03-13-Speech-3-185"
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"en.20020313.7.3-185"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, President-in-Office of the Council, in a well-known passage in Julius Caesar there is a sentence that reads: ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves that we are underlings.’
I think this quotation is particularly appropriate to this moment, because the seriousness of the problem does not lie so much in the protectionist measures that affect the United States as in the reaction that the European Union must have to these aggressive trade moves, relations in which the steel and clementine issues – referred to by my good friend Mr Westendorp – are not just isolated incidents but have their causes and their consequences.
Mention has been made in this House of the ban on imports of hormone-treated meat; the banana war; the export aid declared illegal by a WTO panel; the discussions that took place when the competition policy and certain mergers were implemented by Commissioner Monti; and the aid for certain American products.
What worries me most in this love-hate relationship, however, is not so much what has happened but what the future holds, which is that the Republican administration is on the point of succumbing to the temptation of protectionism, as shown right now in two cases: steel, which has been explained enough – and on this I fully endorse what my colleague Mr Atkins has said – and clementines, which have also been mentioned by Mr Westendorp. In the latter case, as this House knows, the United States unilaterally closed its borders on 30 November.
The Spanish government and my Parliamentary Group brought these events to the Commission’s attention on 12 December and the Commission then took immediate action. Thank you for this promptness. In addition, on 14 February the Spanish government requested that, in view of the breakdown of the talks that had been entered into, action should be started within the WTO.
What I am asking right now is that the same efficacy that people are trying to demonstrate on the matter of steel should also be demonstrated in the case of clementines. This is an even more flagrant case because, while in the first case it is a matter of imposing tariffs, which in my view are abusive and completely illegal, in the second it is about an even more drastic measure: the closing of borders. This matter really does need to be taken to the WTO, but they will only reach a solution to this conflict, in the case of clementines, once several harvests have passed, and I therefore call for immediate compensation and reparations.
What we must do is make the United States sit round a negotiating table and work out a solution to the steel and clementines issues, by setting in motion the forceful measures to which my good friend and compatriot Mr Westendorp has referred."@en1
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