Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-01-13-Speech-2-169"
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"en.20040113.6.2-169"2
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".
Mr President, in my turn I should like to thank the speakers from the European People’s Party, European Socialist and Liberal Groups, who expressed their support for the proposals that Mr Fischler and I have developed and for the paper that we have tabled both in the Council and here in this House.
Our main objectives in these negotiations remain the same: firstly, an additional phase of market opening; secondly, better rules to govern multilateral trade and, finally, better integration of developing countries, which so far have had only a very unequal share in the benefits of increased international trade. If we try to translate all of this into an answer to your questions – what needs to be done, what has to be our objective for 2004 – then it is quite straightforward. Our objective for 2004 is to achieve before the summer what could not be done in Cancún; in other words, it is to complete two thirds of the negotiating process. That is our political objective for 2004.
Well then, you will say, given what you said in your introduction to the debate on how the work is progressing in Geneva, such an objective will no doubt require energy and acceleration. The current work rate and the pressure in the Geneva boiler will have to be increased and, like others, we intend to stoke up the Geneva boiler to get things moving. With this in mind – I have said this and I will say it again in response to Mrs Mann’s question – the letter that my American counterpart has circulated in recent days and on which he commented in the press yesterday is good news, because it gives the lie to a theory that was gaining currency and according to which 2004, an election year in the United States, was going to be a lost year. Well, it is not! 2004 may very well not be a lost year and it is important that two of the major players in world trade, the United States and Europe, support this idea. To achieve this we are of course going to have to get moving and we are going to work, as we have started doing since our mandate was renewed, with the G20, the G90, the United States and Japan, to mention just the main players of the moment, within a system of variable geometry that will enable us to put forward our own position in the best conditions. As Mr Fischler rightly said, in our efforts to work on this process and drive it forward, if we are going to raise the temperature, we are going to need you and the contacts that you maintain with your colleagues in each of the major blocks that I have just mentioned. That is what I had to say in response to the support expressed by a large majority during this debate.
I will now respond briefly to a few criticisms. Mr Lannoye reproaches us, basically, in two respects: firstly, we did not redraft our mandate, we only repositioned it and, secondly, within this mandate traces of the so-called Singapore issues survive. Yes, Mr Lannoye is right that we did not redraft our mandate and that we repositioned it. And if there is a lesson to learn from what has happened between Cancún and now, we should bear in mind that no one around the WTO table has asked to renegotiate the programme of negotiations that was adopted in Doha. It is this programme that is on the table and it is this programme that needs to be negotiated. As for the Singapore issues, it is true that we have adopted a more flexible position. We see our priorities as facilitating trade and introducing greater transparency into public procurement, for reasons that the Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance should understand, being so keen on transparency. In a number of cases this would actually be very beneficial to facilitating trade, in particular for small and medium-sized companies, which often, alas, do not have the resources to pay for the trouble-shooters that the major multinational groups can afford to employ to speed up decisions and ensure a smooth passage through procedures, customs and other networks.
To Mrs Figueiredo and Mr Désir, I will simply say once again that their fears about public services are unfounded. My mandate on this point is clear and completely unambiguous. I have never strayed from it and what is more I have no intention of doing so.
I will now turn to two specific points in response to comments made by Mrs Ferrer and Mrs Corbey. Mrs Ferrer, on the textiles sector, we are prepared to reduce our textiles tariffs and therefore what remains of our industrial protection, but obviously on one condition, and that is that others do the same, which is part of the negotiations. Mrs Corbey was enquiring about where we were on access to medicines: we are working on this in the two arenas where this work is now being followed up. The first of these is Geneva, where we need to transpose the terms of the August agreement into the TRIPS Agreement, and we are working hard on this. It is not as straightforward as it would seem, because the balance that was struck in August between the various different parties and the various different requirements needs to be reflected faithfully in a text that will now be a legal text and, clearly, this requires a little work. We are also working on this within the European Union, because we want, as it were in anticipation, to amend our own provision on obligatory licensing in European legislation to bring it into line with the new WTO agreement and possibly allow easier access in a number of developing countries. We are going to do so by tabling a proposal for a recommendation in the Council of Ministers because, pending the entry into force of the European legislation on patents, which has been adopted but will only take effect in a number of years, the only way of implementing this agreement on access to medicines is to amend existing national laws one by one. We are therefore going to have the Council adopt a recommendation, if it agrees, and we have every reason to think that this will be the case, to ensure that the necessary amendments are made to each of the national laws, pending of course an update to the European provisions, which, I would remind you, will only come into force in a few years’ time. Those are the answers that I wanted to give at this stage and I would like to thank you for your attention."@en1
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