Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-05-29-Speech-3-092"
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"en.20020529.7.3-092"2
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"Mr President, I want to highlight a number of disturbing aspects of this summit, which we, by contrast, Commissioner Vitorino, feel really has been a talking shop which was completely closed to the voice of civil society and silent, not least for reasons of diplomatic good form, on the genuinely important issues.
We have already said on many occasions that, for Europe genuinely to be able to play an important role in Latin America, it must say something different from the United States. However, here too, the only clear deadline set at Madrid was the implementation of the Doha agenda and the negotiation of new free trade agreements. Therefore, free trade is the only prospect we can give Latin America. However, as we all know, this too is very often pure rhetoric. The European Union is not able to provide access to the markets that Latin America would like it to. In any case, even if we achieve a project with the FTAA which we might call the FTAEU, we really do not feel that it will be possible to avoid very large demonstrations such as those which took place in Madrid. One hundred thousand people came to Madrid to demonstrate during the summit – we really cannot say that is insignificant!
I would briefly mention some other issues. With regard to Argentina, for example, the declaration reads: ‘We welcome and support the present efforts of the Argentinean authorities to complete a sound and comprehensive economic programme, which shall enable successful negotiations with the International Monetary Fund …’ Now, no one can deny that the International Monetary Fund has been one of the main causes of the crisis in Argentina. What do you think the Argentinians protesting in the streets will say when they read those words? They will feel deceived and think that the Europeans are cynics as well as the Americans. Nothing was said about Venezuela and this is clearly a problem. Mrs Malmström has already mentioned Cuba. In other words, we feel that the summit declaration is a list of missing items and missed opportunities.
I am becoming increasingly convinced, however, that the real problem is the type of vehicle we are using – the summits – and that we will not achieve much through these megasummits. In my opinion, we should rather take up the proposal made by the Commission for a genuine foreign policy and equip ourselves with the tools and resources to give Latin America an alternative to the United States too."@en1
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