Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-09-25-Speech-3-043"
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"en.20020925.1.3-043"2
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"Mr President, with all due respect to the Commission and the Council, the judgments we are making here in the European Parliament are being made on the basis of resolutions which we passed before
Johannesburg. We passed our resolutions and we held our debate and, that being so, I have no desire to challenge all the positive points we have managed to find in Johannesburg or what Mrs Wallström has said or what the honourable Members who were in Johannesburg have said. I shall not reiterate them, just as I shall refrain from reiterating the negative points, the specifics, aid, renewable sources of energy etc., issues which my honourable friends have already raised.
I should like, if I may, to comment on two or three other points which perhaps received too little attention. We said before Johannesburg that we need to strike a balance between development and trade on the one hand and environmental protection on the other. This balance was not struck. The Johannesburg text is full of references, reservations and provisos, just to make sure we keep our hands off trade. It is written with one eye on the World Trade Organisation and there is no institution with the same standing and influence as the World Trade Organisation to oppose it. That is a fact. It is not good, I am not saying it is fatal, but it is a fact nonetheless.
A second point we made was that we needed to incorporate the cost of environmental protection into
production and
consumption in the most practical way possible. Instead of this, which implies certain things, it implies taxes, it implies bans, political arrangements, a whole series of topics under discussion, we have a statement to the effect that we need to change production methods and consumption patterns. And why not? All very ambitious and even rather literary, I think, but it does not say to what. To me, it is totally incomprehensible, as it is to my first year economics students.
A third point we made was that we would at least try to keep to and, of course, build on and implement what was said in Rio. For example, what has become of the principle of prevention? Why was there a preventive approach? What does this bode for the future? For the policy which we, the United States and others will apply? Why were the United States so insistent?
A fourth point we highlighted was the policy and international dimension of environmental protection and sustainable development. Instead, nothing was done. And with all due respect, not only was no world environment organisation set up; it was buried post haste before Johannesburg had barely started and all discussion of greater political coordination between old and new bodies, between Bretton Woods and the World Trade Organisation, for instance, with the political objective of sustainable development, was sidelined. Why? How are we supposed to pursue a line of thinking that says we set targets, we introduce measures, we monitor and control and we impose sanctions? Which is the very essence of governance. Governance means no more and no less. Because if all it means is moralising to Developing World countries, however useful that may be, it is too little and it is highly hypocritical on our part. I think that pretty speeches were made, with no targets, means or timetables and we need to keep an eye on that.
I suggest and request that we think hard. Surely somehow – I think under the Rules of Procedure – the European Parliament should be able to set up an ad hoc committee to permanently monitor the application of all these pretty speeches along general lines to have come out of Johannesburg, so that we can also look at what the Commission and the spring Council bring and what is happening internationally, so that we do not just simply end up like Epimetheus, saying what we like or dislike after the event and with no monitoring on our part."@en1
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