Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-09-24-Speech-3-220"
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"en.20030924.6.3-220"2
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"Mr President, Commissioners, our first task is to make a correct diagnosis of events. The Union might have made mistakes, but I am not going to make it the scapegoat for the entire breakdown of negotiations, in the same way that I would not blame the donkey in la Fontaine’s fable for eating two clumps of grass. One can and indeed one must discuss tactics but our negotiators did, in essence, stick to their mandate; they made many concessions and backed down in the negotiations on investment and competition. The Union was under no obligation to go further. On the other hand, and I shall return to this point, the reality of the situation means that we must undertake a thorough review of our mandate.
At Cancún, there were other parties willing to stand in judgment and also others who made mistakes. The United States hid behind our skirts, because they had no desire to become involved. India and many other countries showed no interest in the Doha Agenda and although Brazil was interested, in particular with regard to agriculture, it attached greater importance to its own political development.
A wrong diagnosis can be extremely dangerous for the future when major issues are at stake. Let us beware of pressure from within to abandon the common agricultural policy. A good reform requires moving towards eliminating export subsidies, and certainly not long-term support. We must be vigilant in ensuring that industrial problems are not ignored, because it is the international division of labour that is at stake in the WTO, involving an enormous number of jobs. We must beware of a certain naïve optimism as regards the North-South divide. Like many other speakers, I note the pairing off of the advocates of free trade and the major exporters of agricultural produce from the South. I also believe that it would be suicidal for employment in Europe not to see that China, to be followed in future by others, is emerging with huge comparative advantages.
My second question is: what should we do? The discussion that has been proposed is welcome but for the moment should we not also be thinking about initiatives to help the vast number of poor countries who genuinely need results now? Should we not, therefore, include on the Doha Agenda reopening negotiations as soon as possible on some key issues, such as export subsidies, cotton, textiles, special and differentiated treatment and probably transparency too.
In the medium and long term, we must hold fast to multilateralism and undertake more detailed work on reforming the WTO, calling on the citizens to become involved and to participate. I believe, and this is where the developing world activists are right, that if the WTO is to be consolidated, a new look must be cast at its foundations, in any event, those that involve a sense of responsibility. The WTO is built for free trade and the trading of comparative advantages, but issues of legitimate protection are increasingly being raised. We in the North do so by talking about patents, public health, the environment and the social clause and in the South they raise the issue by talking about access to non-reciprocal markets.
This is why, in my opinion, our ‘liberalisation plus rules’ line will never fully convince the European public, because it knows that these are rules favouring free trade. We therefore want to see a world fair trade organisation, with rules for a fruitful mutual opening up of markets that will also entail achieving a balance between liberalisation and genuine protection. In this context, some differentiation is necessary, given the enormous disparities between countries throughout the world. This is a political issue that has failed to find a satisfactory solution at the WTO.
On all of these issues, let us enter into open dialogue with Brazil, with the G21, with the G90 and also with the US public. Could we not also redefine our bilateral and regional policies, which rely too heavily on the mantra ‘Aid for Trade’, whereas most countries say that they have other priorities, such as pre-sale production capacity and also being able to make use of international public assets."@en1
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