Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-02-11-Speech-2-226"
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"en.20030211.10.2-226"2
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".
Mr President, Mrs Kinnock’s question concerns the progress of our negotiations with the African, Caribbean and Pacific countries on economic partnership agreements. These economic partnership agreements are part of an initial discussion stage. They logically follow what was agreed at Cotonou and we are trying to ensure that our ACP interlocutors reorganise themselves into sufficiently large groups to remedy the current situation. This situation, roughly speaking, is as follows: we gave them – or granted them, as we used to say – significant trade preferences, which, moreover, are causing problems for other countries as we have seen within the WTO, and they are not taking enough advantage of these preferences. We must therefore change this.
Throughout this process, therefore, what is guiding us is the development aspect and we clearly intend, in this matter, to make trade considerations dependent on developmental considerations, taking account of the fact that this is our priority with the ACP countries as a whole. I would therefore reassure Mrs Kinnock on this point, if that is needed. It is not that businessmen hungry for access to extraordinarily attractive markets have taken control of these negotiations. The negotiations continue to follow the lines of what was agreed with Parliament and with the Council, in other words prioritising development.
It should, however, be recognised – and it may well be that Mrs Kinnock’s question reflects this – that many ACP representatives still have reservations with regard to these negotiations on regional economic partnership agreements. Many ACP countries are indeed asking us questions, for example on the degree of liberalisation or reciprocity we intend to achieve, as if that were the main objective of these agreements. I will repeat, as many times as necessary, that the main objective of these agreements is not to open up the ACP markets further to Community products.
These economic partnership agreements are not, to our minds, simply free-trade zones that are nothing more than instruments for trade. We want to make this a business, a process, a partnership to serve the development of these countries themselves, in particular in allowing us to address the problem of the many internal barriers to trade that still exist both in Africa and in the Caribbean and the Pacific, and also in allowing us to address the restrictions affecting the competitiveness of these regions, in order to turn them into poles of economic development. We have also launched relevant studies on this point – we call them impact and sustainability assessments – to analyse the social, economic and environmental effects of these agreements which – I would remind you – are, first and foremost, agreements between these countries themselves, and we shall ensure that the results of these studies are taken into consideration throughout the negotiations. I would also point out that we have made available to the ACP countries the financial resources necessary to enable them to carry out their own analyses and acquire the necessary technical assistance.
That is where we are up to in the negotiation process, which is in its initial stage, which we would like to extend to a second stage from September this year. We have established various contacts with various ACP regions and we all know that some of them are more prepared to liase with us than others. As far as they are concerned, they have choices to make within the ACP group. We do not intend, and I do not intend, to make these choices for them. We shall liase with them when they are ready and those that are ready first will begin discussions with us when they decide to do so."@en1
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