Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-02-11-Speech-2-231"
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"en.20030211.10.2-231"2
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".
Mr President, Mr Howitt’s question refers to the commitment made by the Commission at the time of the Doha negotiations to examine a request that was very firmly presented to us by Thailand and the Philippines concerning the pricing system applicable to imports of canned tuna from the ACP countries.
Very roughly, in summary, we apply to the ACP countries preferences that are not applied to Thailand and the Philippines, and these two countries considered it appropriate, at a time when we were trying to obtain WTO agreement for a general derogation concerning all these preferences, to make their own agreement conditional upon negotiations with us.
We accepted this request, mainly for the benefit of the ACP countries since their preferential system with us could only be validated by the WTO if we accepted the request. We undertook to hold discussions with Thailand and the Philippines and, if necessary, to enter into a mediation procedure. I repeat, to make this very clear, that, without this discussion/mediation procedure, the WTO derogation concerning the Cotonou Agreement would not have been obtained.
We therefore went ahead with these discussions with Thailand and the Philippines in December 2001, January last year and spring last year. They did not lead to an agreement. The demands regarding access to our market made by these countries seemed excessive to us at the time, and the offers we made seemed insufficient to them at the time. We all, therefore, asked the World Trade Organisation for mediation last autumn.
In December, the mediator ruled and recommended that the Community open up a quota of 25 000 tonnes of canned tuna at an import duty rate of 12%, given that the normal rate, if I may say so, is 24% and the ACP rate is 0%. So, ACP 0%, normal rate 24%, mediator’s proposal 25 000 tonnes at 12%.
The Commission is in favour of the adoption of these recommendations. We feel this is a matter of credibility and trust, and a way to manage our relations with a number of trade partners within the WTO mechanism. We believe that recourse to mediation in this type of case is an honest procedure, that, in a way, it places on an equal footing mammoths such as the European Union and smaller creatures such as Thailand or the Philippines, and that this is part of our way of viewing our trade relations with a number of countries, in particular developing world countries.
We have analysed the mediator’s recommendations and our analysis is that the quota of 25 000 tonnes in question will not have a significant impact on imports from the ACP countries or on imports from other countries which also benefit from generalised preferences. I am thinking in particular of a number of Latin American countries. This quota would represent approximately 9% of total imports of canned tuna in the Union and 4% of the total consumption of the Union.
Community imports of canned tuna from the ACP countries have undergone a significant rise over the past few years. They currently represent approximately 60% of global imports and, given the very close, and often very welcome links between the industry in the ACP countries and certain sectors of the Community industry, we do not consider that imports from the ACP countries are seriously threatened by this mediation. That is why we are supporting it and we have proposed the adoption of the mediator’s opinion in the Council of Ministers. Depending on the result of this consultation, we will shortly present a draft regulation to implement this quota."@en1
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