Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-02-10-Speech-1-115"
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"en.20030210.9.1-115"2
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"Mr President, it is abundantly clear that the European Union intends to sacrifice small and medium-sized farmers and support for agriculture at European Union level at the alter of the World Trade Organisation. The inviolable principle behind all European Union decisions is how best to serve the interests of big business and the multinationals. The forthcoming reform of the CAP – which is a catastrophic overhaul, not the mid-term review it claims to be – is being carried out in the run up to and under pressure from WTO negotiations. The proposed WTO agreement speeds up the liberalisation of the international trade in agricultural produce on the pretext that international trade will increase and benefit the developing countries. The same was said of GATT, and look what happened there. GATT was going to increase the international trade in agricultural produce and generate wealth. Not only did the developing countries and their people not benefit; they were worse off than before, with no margin for development even in countries with a high output like Argentina. All that happened was that the multinationals producing and selling agricultural produce sent their profit figures soaring.
The same will happen with the WTO agreement, for three basic reasons. The first has to do with the approach, which favours monopolies, as did GATT. The second has to do with the international system of prices and subsidies for agricultural produce and the international system of prices for industrial goods. The rich countries buy cheap agricultural produce and sell expensive industrial goods, including medicines. The third reason has to do with who produces and owns the agricultural produce in numerous developing countries, where farming and agricultural produce are owned by huge multinationals paying starvation wages.
That is why the Communist Party of Greece is against the proposed agreement and is doing everything it can to coordinate the grass-roots fight in every country for international trade based on mutual benefit of equal value to all."@en1
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