Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-01-30-Speech-4-007"
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"en.20030130.1.4-007"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, there is nobody here who cannot see that the world is divided by a gulf separating those who have food from those who are hungry, those who can read and write from those who are illiterate, those who have access to healthcare from those who are not entitled to this. There have been countless statistical reports. The most recent, the report by the World Food Programme, warns us that 38 million people are likely to die from lack of food, drinking water and medicines in the coming months. Yet we must openly admit that the international community is not yet doing enough. This is not the central item on our political agenda, as it should be. This is not the main criterion considered by the Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the G8 in their actions. If we do not change our approach and speed up our action, if we do not succeed in regulating the globalisation processes with environmental and social sustainability, the historians of the future will judge our civilisation very harshly for this failure.
Let us focus on the diseases related to poverty, on malaria and tuberculosis. Let us consider AIDS, a scourge which has already claimed 25 million victims, let us remember the 14 000 people throughout the world who contract the HIV virus every day. Prevention is essential but it is not everything. It will be difficult to find excuses in the future for the fact that we do not succeed in treating 95% of the people suffering from AIDS. It will seem a real crime, considering that modern medicine can do a great deal to change AIDS from a terminal disease into a chronic condition and, in particular, to reduce the risk of transmission from mother to child. Therefore, the European Union must put active pressure on the United States so that an agreement can, at last, be reached to exclude from intellectual property rights and patentability those drugs which, if used freely, will save the lives of millions of people. This would go hand in hand with the intention to give a greater financial undertaking and with this draft regulation, which we hope will be adopted without delay at first reading.
Similarly, the decision to grant free access to the European market to products from less developed countries is important. The European Union must now shoulder the responsibility of expressing the principles and positions we are discussing today in all international fora, starting with the World Trade Organisation. Only thus, with a new form of governance on a world-wide scale, with greater participation and transparency, with practical decisions and measures, will we be able to combat hunger and poverty and win this challenge, the greatest challenge facing mankind."@en1
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