Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-09-14-Speech-2-160"
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"en.20040914.10.2-160"2
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"Madam President, the question concerns the conclusions drawn by the Commission in the light of that abolition of international textile quotas that will come into force as of 31 December of this year following a decision taken ten years ago at multilateral level by the World Trade Organisation. Ten years ago, we jointly set the date for the abolition of quotas for the end of this year. The day is almost upon us, and – understandably, even though we have had all the time we needed to prepare for it by means of progressive liberalisation - it has provoked a certain amount of anxiety, together with fears and difficulties to which the Commission has endeavoured to respond.
The overall strategy that we have adopted consists of considering the European textiles and clothing sector, as the questioner himself has done, not as an industry of the past – whose gradual disappearance would have to be managed, more or less decently, from a social and political point of view – but, in sharp contrast, as an industry of the future. Textiles and clothing in Europe is a competitive, modern, innovative and productive industry. Europe is the continent in which there is no more modern and productive sector than that of textiles and clothing.
Against this backdrop, the fact remains that finally abolishing the quotas presents us with a challenge in terms of competitiveness to which we must be capable of responding, and this is what the Commission did last June by proposing action lines. We worked on this matter with a high-level group representing the Commission, the Member States, various actors from the sector, producers, distributors and trades union representatives. I myself also took part personally in the group’s work, and a number of conclusions were reached.
In essence, what we are proposing is firstly to start monitoring international trade – and in particular our imports – a little more closely. We shall therefore put in place at the end of this year a monitoring system in more or less real time, so that the figures – and, in particular, possible sudden rises in imports – can be spotted more easily, and we can draw our own conclusions as necessary, as the WTO entitles us to do. We shall also pay increased attention to questions of international competition and, in particular, to illegal practices such as dumping, fraud and the protection of intellectual property, each of which are, of course, cancers that must be monitored extremely closely.
The second element is conquering foreign markets. This, as far as we are concerned, remains the most effective weapon for ensuring the future of the sector, whether the markets concerned are major ones that remain protected, such as the US market in several cases, or potentially significant markets for us, namely a number of markets in some, but not all, developing countries which, in the textiles and clothing sector, are now potential importers of high added value products, including European products. This entire discussion, essentially focused on tariff issues and on non-tariff barriers, is the result of the Doha round of trade negotiations. We are therefore at the heart of these international negotiations.
I should like to add a regional perspective to this multilateral work concerning the Euro-Mediterranean zone, on which we have been working with our partners from around the Mediterranean region, namely (and naturally enough) the countries of the Europe of 25, together with the candidate countries or potential candidate countries, such as Turkey. The idea is to set up a kind of pan-European integrated ‘textiles and clothing’ zone, with the help, for example, of accumulated benefits of pan-Euro-Mediterranean origin, about which we have been negotiating, up to and including this year.
Lastly, a brief word about China, which is, of course, the most formidable competitor in this area, in view of that country’s efficiency, productivity and salary levels. We have set up a system of bilateral dialogue with the Chinese as regards the textile trade to look into ways of ensuring that trade is not disrupted too significantly as a result of quotas being abolished. In addition to this government-level and administration-level dialogue, we have set up a dialogue within European and Chinese business circles, and the first meeting in this connection took place recently.
All of these measures, which were fostered by the Commission’s initial communication last October and which were approached within the framework of this work done by the high-level working group, will be the subject of a fresh Commission communication, currently scheduled for October. We shall therefore approach the end of the year deadline in full knowledge of the facts, but also with a toolbox that has recently undergone significant improvements."@en1
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