Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-09-24-Speech-3-252"
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"en.20030924.6.3-252"2
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"Madam President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, ladies and gentlemen, I would first like to thank you all for your contributions to this debate, which has been a very important one. In my response I would like to concentrate on a few points that I think need to be explored further and also clarified somewhat.
As far as the peace clause is concerned, let me remind you that it expires at the end of the year in any case. Although this does not mean that the whole WTO agricultural edifice will come tumbling down, there is a possibility that the way we in Europe have implemented our Uruguay Round commitments will come under fire. I would also like to sound a warning note: some states see this as an opportunity to set up a variety of panels. That would be another means of undermining the actual WTO process. We therefore need to consider all this very carefully.
Lastly, one thing that we must achieve is to get over more effectively our basic philosophy about the purpose of the WTO negotiations. The point of negotiating is that there has to be some middle ground that the various parties can move towards. It does not mean moving towards an extreme position. If you do not take that principle into account properly when preparing for negotiations, the risk of failure in the future will remain fairly high. For that reason my advice – if we are not to shelve things but draw the necessary conclusions now – is that we should carry out a careful analysis and debate matters, and then reach a decision in as consensual way as possible about what the next steps should be. That should enable us to get everything back on track again, as it were.
Firstly, one of the issues being debated was whether a multilateral approach or bilateral agreements should have priority. I do not think there is any alternative. There is no better approach than the multilateral one, and we need to adhere to that. Bilateral agreements can of course sometimes be helpful, but they should not be a substitute for a multilateral approach. Furthermore, no one should deceive themselves into thinking that only multilateral negotiations are difficult. Many bilateral agreements can also be hard to achieve, for example agreements with the Mercosur countries or many others besides. I also believe that it would be a mistake if by precipitately switching to bilateral negotiations we fell into the trap of thinking that those opened up the way to a kind of win-win situation. By that I mean imagining that you can take home what you have won in bilateral negotiations and then be well placed to make further massive demands when it comes to multilateral negotiations. I think some caution is called for here from a European point of view. Nevertheless, we should have direct discussions and direct negotiations on a bilateral basis with many individual states that are WTO members so that they understand our stance towards them in multilateral negotiations.
My second point is this: I very much believe that it was the right thing to reform the common agricultural policy. We made those reforms ourselves – and I am pleased to remind you about that here, because we had that very debate here in this Chamber. We said that European society was demanding reforms, and that was why we needed them. We cannot come along now and say that we were only pursuing our project to make Europe's agriculture and European agricultural policy more sustainable, for example, because we needed an argument to succeed in international negotiations. That really would be putting the cart before the horse.
This did of course give us a certainly flexibility in international negotiations, but it goes without saying that we should always carry out our internal reforms first, and then base our mandate for negotiations on that. Or do you really believe that this House would be willing to give the Commission a negotiating mandate that goes beyond our own existing common policies? That is inconceivable, it would never work, and we should not therefore have any such illusions.
What we cannot tolerate, however, is an attempt to simply ‘write off’ the contribution we are making by virtue of our own reforms, so that for example commitments to make reductions are not based on the amount we agreed last time, during the Uruguay Round, which was taken as the starting point at that time, but that instead any competition-distorting support measures we are currently implementing are treated as the baseline. That would be unfair to us and that is something we also need to make clear.
My third point is that the NGOs have played a major part in this debate. We should not make the mistake of acting now as if the NGOs have not behaved properly and cut off their financial support or whatever. I think that would be nonsensical. What we must do, however, is to seek a dialogue with the NGOs. We need to deal with them and with the arguments they put forward. This is pretty important, when I think, for example, how much the position of the same NGO may vary depending on whether you are talking to the department responsible for development policy or the department for environmental policy.
You cannot just do what many NGOs have done and say that Europe's agricultural sector must become environmentally friendly and we must have a budget for agri-environmental measures. Because if we do that you cannot come along afterwards and say that any form whatsoever of agricultural aid is undesirable! That is inconsistent, and we need to have a more meaningful debate here.
This would also enable us to reduce mistrust towards the developing countries, which sometimes get the feeling that the complexity of the negotiations and the difficulties involved have been designed to make access more difficult for those who have not already been taking part in these negotiations for years. We need to dismantle the barriers here.
First and foremost, we should try to get back to the facts. We should involve independent organisations such as the OECD more closely so as to achieve a more objective debate. As they say in the world of agriculture, you can take a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink. There also needs to be a willingness to go into the arguments and to enter into a real dialogue. That is the only way for us to make progress."@en1
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