Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-09-29-Speech-4-022"
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"en.20050929.3.4-022"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, the reality is that the total opening up of the textile trade on 1 January of this year led to an avalanche of Chinese products. The Commission proposed restricting these imports and, as a result, reached the agreement in June. Taking advantage of the time period necessary to establish this agreement, however, certain European importers accumulated a large quantity of goods.
The new agreement of 5 September 2005 contributes to resolving this problem, which had reached a point at which it was not benefiting anybody. But that agreement cannot be described as satisfactory, because it has given the impression that there has been a lack of rigour.
Some people have said, right here today, that the textile industry should have adapted more quickly because it had known what was going to happen for the last 10 years. But I would predict that, if we do not deal with these challenges in an ordered manner, though we are talking about textiles today, tomorrow we may be talking about cars or communications and information technology products.
This is not an argument between free trade and protectionism, but rather what we want is increasing, but fair and transparent, trade, which respects minimum social and environmental standards.
Finally, I would like to draw your attention to a situation that is causing alarm in the sector. In addition to the well-known distribution chains that produce goods in China at stable prices, unfamiliar makes have appeared that declare unusually low prices, which do not even cover the cost of the raw materials for the product.
For example, prices of trousers entering the Union can oscillate between EUR 6 and EUR 0.43; in both cases we are talking about trousers produced in China. In my country, these practices represent around 40% of imports originating from China.
I suspect, Commissioner, that we are dealing with a case of fraud, in which the value declared in customs is being used to reduce the importer’s tax bill, both in terms of the Community tariff and in terms of VAT. I would therefore like to know what decisions the Commission is going to take in this regard."@en1
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