Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-09-25-Speech-3-010"
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". – Mr President, Mrs Wallström has correctly said that I will be talking more specifically about trade, finance and follow-up, but first a few general remarks.
Second, on Friday, the EU and the ACP countries launch negotiations on Regional Economic Partnership Agreements under the Cotonou Agreement. I can go into more detail if you have questions about this.
Third, last week, the Commission adopted a communication on trade and development, addressed to Council and to this Parliament. It sets out what needs to be done to help developing partners benefit from national, regional and global trade. It responds, within less than a month, to the Johannesburg Political Declaration and the call for increased Trade-Related Assistance.
The relevant Doha provisions are quoted throughout the text. The Johannesburg text also calls for the successful completion of the Doha Agenda, placing the needs of developing countries at the heart of negotiations, but without interfering with its negotiations on subsidies and tariffs. On subsidies, the Johannesburg text directly quotes the Council's conclusions. The text also reaffirms the text on access to medicines and TRIPs.
In short, the Johannesburg text on trade and finance is in line with the mandate given by the Development Council on 30 May. That is not a bad result.
The message from southern delegations was nevertheless loud and clear: 'The North must show that it is serious about Doha being a development round'. That is a rather useful reminder which we, from the Commission side, welcome and find meaningful.
Regarding finances, Johannesburg fully reconfirmed the millennium development goals, also adding a few new, important targets. Sustainable development remains the core objective of the Johannesburg political declaration, and this gives us a coherent framework for implementing the outcome of all major UN conferences.
The fight against poverty was given high priority throughout the chapters of the Plan of Implementation. It is a step forward that the summit explicitly prioritised fighting poverty in pursuing targets such as access to energy, water and sanitation, and equitable sharing of the benefits of biodiversity.
We therefore have sound, common yardsticks for whether the community of nations is doing enough. The agreed language on finance ensures a dynamic post-Monterrey process, thereby maintaining the pressure for more ODA. You will not be surprised to hear, however, that I think donors should be doing a lot more. If you want concrete answers as to where the EU is going, you should look at 2003 fiscal budgets for each of the EU Member States. That is what I will do.
Regarding the role of the European Parliament – there has been some debate on the role of Members of this Parliament at the summit, and on collaboration with the Commission. Since some of these remarks have been made in public, I would like to take this opportunity to briefly react.
The Commission was pleased to accept a substantial presence from the Parliament in the Union's delegation, as has been the case for all major UN conferences. Members followed the summit actively and interacted with the Commission in briefings, summit events, side-events and so on, all in the interests of representing Europe.
One needs to keep in mind that Johannesburg was a UN conference. This means delegations must reach consensus. Not everybody gets everything.
As agreed between the institutions, Members of Parliament participated in delegations as observers and did not take part in negotiating sessions. There was no deviation from established practice in Johannesburg. I think I should repeat this. There was no deviation from established practice in Johannesburg.
The Commission did its best to support the parliamentarians. They were kept regularly informed of negotiations, and the Commission listened carefully to their views. Debriefing meetings were held on a daily basis by senior Commission officials. This demonstrates the importance we gave to a transparent flow of information. Both Commissioner Wallström and I participated in this process, and I personally met the Parliament delegation three times during the summit, not to mention the Parliamentary side-events I attended, including two events organised by the Green party.
All of this was done within the current framework, a framework referred to explicitly in President Prodi's letter agreeing to parliamentary participation. I pointed out to Members of Parliament raising this issue in Johannesburg during the summit, as I had to, that we had not come there with new rules and that it was not in our power in Johannesburg to change these arrangements. Any such changes require a tripartite decision involving the Commission, Council and European Parliament. If being a loyal custodian of what has been agreed to makes one ancient, I prefer that, rather than trying to be modern if that means not being able to respect what has been agreed to.
Now a few words on follow-up.
Partnerships between governments, business and civil society will be necessary to deliver the commitments made in Johannesburg. We welcome the more than 200 partnerships launched at the summit. These partnerships will hopefully bring additional resources and expertise, and mobilise action at all levels.
But it is the quality and size of the partnerships that matter, not the numbers as such. The Cotonou Agreement is 'only' one partnership, but it covers 15 EU Member States, 77 developing countries, and has a financial protocol of EUR 15.2 billion. We are not starting from scratch.
The European Commission will focus on securing strong EU implementation of the two EU-wide partnerships on water and energy launched in Johannesburg.
During the summit, the EU signed with its African partners a strategic EU-Africa partnership on water and sanitation. In conjunction with the EU Water Initiative, this is an important step towards the development of concrete actions building on strong ownership and commitment from African partners.
More generally, it is clear that the effective implementation of the outcome of Johannesburg means translating intentions into action through development cooperation undertaken regionally and nationally as well as locally.
The EU must continue to take the lead. The European Council has already agreed to review, at its Spring meeting in 2003, the EU strategy for sustainable development, with a focus on putting into practice the commitments undertaken in Johannesburg. To prepare this review, the Commission intends to submit proposals building on the communication 'Towards a Global Partnership for Sustainable Development' issued earlier this year. Internally, one of the main issues to be addressed in the synthesis report for next Spring's European Council should be how to move towards more sustainable consumption and production patterns in the EU.
I would conclude by saying that the European Union can be satisfied with the role it played in Johannesburg; and by stressing 'European
'. The cooperation between Commission and Council was also a very positive experience.
As Commissioner Wallström said, we are in a different political climate than in 1992. It is almost as if NGOs and the Group of 77 had given up expecting constructive multilateralism from the United States; as if the US is not part of the equation for sustainable development. That attitude is not possible in the negotiation rooms, where the US, of course, is a real player, as we could see when the US and OPEC members joined forces in resisting targets on renewable energy. But Johannesburg did result in consensus, and that in itself is positive.
The EU clearly came with the longest wish list. But of course, the higher the level of ambition, the greater the scope for disappointment. NGOs and the press focus on these shortcomings. So be it. But as responsible politicians, we must be careful not to draw the conclusion that we, for this reason, should be less ambitious in the future. The Commission does not believe the EU – and indeed the world – can afford to be less ambitious.
Let me address trade issues in more detail. I have noted some concerns here. The negotiations were indeed difficult. Developing countries focused on trade and on subsidies in agriculture. This forced the EU to put in a strong effort to safeguard Doha as the place to discuss the substance and to avoid, in general, a derailing of the multilateral agenda.
I have noted point 6 in the motion for a resolution, and I would like to point out that I think this is a correct reading of this problem. We succeeded in avoiding this derailing of the multilateral agenda, but of course we had to use up negotiation capital defending what everybody had in fact internationally agreed less than a year ago.
What is very encouraging – and you could call this 'EU leadership' – is that we avoided a repetition of the disorganised 'agenda overload' that was in fact the cause of the breakdown in Seattle. When NGOs say that Johannesburg was a failure because it didn’t reopen Doha and Monterrey, this is a self-constructed and unnecessary misunderstanding of what Johannesburg was about. The fact that some MEPs seem to share this misunderstanding does not help much.
Doha dealt with trade in November 2001. Monterrey dealt with financing in March 2002. This helped Johannesburg succeed. The multilateral agenda was better organised for Johannesburg. This enabled us – despite the difficulties I mentioned – to focus in the end-game on the core issues of the Johannesburg Summit.
The EU will continue to promote its positive agenda on trade for the benefit of developing countries. There are plenty of things to report here:
First, we are ahead of other major trading partners on market access, thanks in particular to 'Everything But Arms'."@en1
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