Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-05-16-Speech-4-029"
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"en.20020516.1.4-029"2
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"Madam President, today we have before us reports that are among the most important this week. They provide a brief for the EC representatives of a Community that is espousing the world’s leading programme of sustainable development at the Johannesburg Summit, the purpose of which is to get closer to the optimistic prospects that first saw life at the Rio Summit in 1992. We must be able to mesh economically and socially stable development with a high level of environmental protection in such a way that these factors do not hold each other back but together give a greater boost to welfare and prosperity than either one could do alone.
The draft report is rather pessimistic in its assessment of developments to date. Obviously it takes time even to slow down the negative development that is so rapidly on the increase. Only then will positive developments start to become visible. We, nevertheless, have to take care that we do not try to respond to exponential negative development with a linearly developing policy, in which case we would always be lagging behind reality.
In Rio an important principle was agreed to foster cooperation with grassroots civil society. The principle is already close to the ideals of the EU in the first place, but it is also important in that it could break the rigidity and inertia of traditional politics. Partnership projects are built on the principle that good models are easy to copy. The social, economic and ecological development of societies and democratisation are closely connected as we have seen many times in adverse situations.
A new report out on the UN’s development programme says that only a very small minority of the world’s companies bear sufficient social responsibility. However, there are good examples too. It is of vital importance how we in the European Union treat our responsible companies and those that are aspiring to responsibility. It is more important than ever to pitch Community policy in such a way that companies are able to comply with it and so that it is also more advantageous for them to do so. Similarly, we must make a consistent effort to prevent social and ecological dumping in global markets with reference to the rules agreed in the WTO. A recent example is emissions trading: we must be able to fix payments and tariffs for products from third countries that do not participate in the scheme to compensate for the additional burden for companies that do."@en1
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