Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-02-10-Speech-1-060"
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"en.20030210.7.1-060"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, I will not repeat what I have said before on the subject of globalisation and the so-called neoliberalist model. I will endeavour to go straight to the point. The point is that what we can do, what Europe can do to respond to the many undeniably rightful demands is fight on one particular front, the open, most sensitive front, for North-South relations, and to free, or create the conditions which make it possible to free, hundreds of millions of people from hunger and poverty. We must fight on the front of protectionism, starting with the slogans, with the many things which have been said even in this debate. When we say that the wealthy can indulge in protectionism in any event, we are saying something that is undeniably true, but we saw at Doha that, for the wealthy countries, protectionism means introducing social clauses, environmental clauses, talking about food safety and using these instruments – and we were reproached for this at Doha by Indonesia, Brazil and India – for protectionism.
‘Do not give us your milk, do not give us your agricultural products, please, because your giving us milk and wheat represents unfair competition for Peruvian farmers … Do what you are asking us to do: open up your markets … Open up your markets … trade means work. If we cannot market our products we will have more unemployed men and women.’ These were the words of the Peruvian President, Mr Toledo, to us a month and a half or two months ago in a formal sitting in this Chamber. We must respond. In this connection, I would like to take advantage of the presence of Commissioner Lamy to say that the modalities for the post-Doha agriculture trade round presented by the European Union do not go far enough. We must be bolder. We must not continue to let the United States carry off the prizes for genuine liberalisation of the agricultural markets. The United States adopted its Farm Bill last spring, sending out a lamentable signal of protectionism and farming subsidies – as they had done with respect to trade – with regard to its internal market, but, in the area of foreign trade, putting forward a proposal which goes much further than the European proposal. I believe that, on this matter, Europe must – if everything we are saying is true, if all the attention we are claiming to pay to the countries of the developing world where others are not is genuine – be much more courageous.
This is a practical political decision that we have to make, in the knowledge that there is a price for going against protectionism. Not everybody agrees that these are good principles: there will be opposition from the textiles lobby, the farmers lobby. Do we have the courage to do it or not?"@en1
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