Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-03-10-Speech-1-067"
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"en.20030310.4.1-067"2
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"Commissioner Lamy, Commissioner Reding, as you have, indeed, noted, these GATS negotiations are giving rise to a great deal of concern in the countries of the European Union, and this trend is reminiscent in many respects of unrest at the time of the Multilateral Agreement on Investments (MAI).
Indeed, GATS does contain provisions on investments too. That said, more broadly speaking, the concern is due to the fact that the negotiations and their outcome will affect much more than trade rules, impacting on the internal rules of the countries belonging to the WTO as well. When we talk about water supply or the postal services sector, for example, not about cross-border postal services but the internal organisation of the postal services sector, it is clear that we are going beyond the bounds of international trade. Furthermore, that raises the question, with regard to both this agreement and the TRIPS agreement on intellectual property, that the WTO might be going beyond its remit.
The problem with this agreement is precisely that it lumps everything together: banking and insurance services but also water and energy supply, postal services, education and health, potentially. In this regard, it is Europe’s negotiating line that will allow us to make distinctions and ensure that some areas are not, indeed, placed under the authority of the WTO and its Dispute Settlement Body.
The first point I would like to raise concerns the protection of European public services, for we have witnessed a dangerous shift in recent months. At the beginning, the Commission’s position and statements declared that liberalisation offers would not be made in the field of European public services. Then we said that liberalisation offers would not be made in the areas of health, education and audiovisual services. However, European services, public services, are much more wide-ranging than that. In actual fact, we can see that offers have been made in the field of postal services and that, subject to clarification and classification in the WTO, offers could be made in the field of energy and water. We therefore call upon the Commission to take a clear line and to exclude European public services from all liberalisation offers, which must be the competence of the Member States, the Council and the European Parliament, not the competence of the WTO.
Secondly, reciprocity is not automatic, but there must be consistency, and the Union cannot ask others to liberalise public service sectors and then expect not to be asked to do the same. We have already requested that countries such as Tanzania, Mozambique and Bangladesh liberalise their water sectors, for example. I believe we must not put that kind of pressure on the developing countries. Quite the opposite: we must promote cooperation, we must promote investment in sectors where these countries need it but within the framework of cooperation, letting them decide what environmental, social or other rules to impose on foreign investors.
Thirdly and lastly, I believe, Mr Lamy, that what you have said about excluding public services by revising the agreement and Article 1(3) thereof is not right. It would be sufficient to amend the subparagraph which restricts the definition of governmental services to services which are not provided on a commercial or competitive basis and stipulate that the States belonging to the WTO are free to exclude their public services from this negotiation."@en1
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