Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-02-21-Speech-1-125"
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"en.20050221.14.1-125"2
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".
Mr President, I feel that this has been a very interesting debate on issues that are important to our common future. Your speeches, ladies and gentlemen, have confirmed the richness of the debate and have demonstrated the wide range of viewpoints on the subject of globalisation.
At this stage, I should like to highlight a point that I believe was also aired during Mr Désir’s speech, concerning a degree of convergence that, despite everything, is becoming apparent – I mean regarding globalisation. At first it appeared that there were two extreme positions: one consisting of seeing only the negative side of globalisation and the other, initially expressed in Porto Alegre, something of an all-out rejection of globalisation.
What we are seeing today – what is clearly visible – is that, at the Davos Forum, a certain effort at corporate social responsibility is being made and an increasingly strong emphasis is being placed on a programme for global government or governance. There is also an interest in taking on board some of the concerns expressed by so many non-governmental organisations and by so many protagonists of the movement that initially saw itself even as an anti-globalisation movement.
Many of those people originally in the anti-globalisation movement quickly realised that globalisation was inevitable. Today’s globalisation is not the result of a decision made by any one country or group of countries, and nor is it a conspiracy on the part of a group of companies. Today’s globalisation has much more to do with the trends of international trade and, in particular, the technological revolution, which no government really controls. Consequently, instead of just protesting against globalisation, many of these actors and protagonists have chosen, rightly in my view, to seek an alternative form of globalisation, and to try to incorporate some of their concerns into globalisation. That is our position. I welcome this because I feel that we can learn from both Davos and Porto Alegre, although proposals have been made in both places that cannot be taken very seriously. There are lessons to be learnt, however, from both processes.
With regard to Europe and the Commission, what can I tell you? We must, I feel, work on practical issues, from both an internal and an external perspective. From an internal perspective, are we in favour of cohesion or not? I am in favour of cohesion and the Commission is in favour of cohesion – economic, social and territorial – and I therefore appeal to you today, ladies and gentlemen, to help me and to help the Commission ensure that all EU governments are also in favour of cohesion and ready to offer their help with, for example, the financial perspective that we have been debating, because poverty does not only affect countries of the Southern Hemisphere, it also affects Europe. Europe now has greater disparities than ever before – and this is especially true of post-enlargement Europe. We need more advanced programmes in Europe to fight social exclusion. Accordingly, if we wish to conduct a coherent debate on the issue of cohesion, we must begin by seeking to implement cohesion – economic, social and territorial cohesion – here in Europe. This forms part of a fast-track approach that is vital for the Union.
Then there is the external perspective: what can the Commission and the EU do on the external stage? In this context, two areas that I think should not be seen as mutually incompatible or contradictory are those of international trade and development aid. Some remarks that I heard were against international trade on the grounds that international trade is, to some extent, the embodiment of the neoliberal model. Let me tell you once again that, in my conversations with the leaders of developing countries, the first request that almost all of them make is in the area of trade – they want greater access to the markets of more developed countries – and so we must also help these countries with regard to trade. It cannot therefore be said that trade and aid are irreconcilably incompatible. It is clear to me that we can and must do more for developing countries, in both of these areas. Yet we can also ask more of them, because when the EU and the EU Member States give considerable amounts of aid, as we do – worldwide, the EU is the biggest donor of development aid – we also have the right to demand good governance on the part of those countries and we want to know if the money given to them is being used properly and above board and if in fact the reforms aimed at better integrating those countries into international trade are being carried out. This is also a shared responsibility.
Let me tell you that the Commission wants to go further. We want to make a more ambitious contribution towards achieving the Millennium Objectives. As things stand, it is clear that we are only limited by the resources available. We therefore intend to continue to work with the Member States and with Parliament in order to set a more ambitious agenda in the area of development aid, above all by placing Africa at the forefront of our priorities, because Africa has structural problems that other regions have, to some degree, already overcome, particularly because of their more successful integration into international trade. I should like to assure you that the Commission and I would like to see an attitude of greater decisiveness and greater commitment to the aims of a global world, a fairer global world in which the EU must play a leading role in encouraging more responsible governance of our planet’s resources and creating a fairer society on a global scale.
These are our values, and we are ready to fight for them."@en1
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