Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-03-22-Speech-3-200"
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"en.20060322.16.3-200"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, ‘You will eat when you are competitive’ is a slogan on a poster: in the background, a starving African child. The phrase is very emphatic, but it actually seems that the European Union, and this is a euphemism, is placing too much emphasis on the effectiveness of trade in the fight against poverty.
We are talking about rights – the same rights for which we have struggled in Europe, the same rights on which the European Union is founded. The European Parliament cannot wish to remove these values. We are at a crucial point in the struggle against poverty and we must meet the objectives that we have set ourselves.
The report under debate today is incomplete, and in the draft, in fact, there were some points where the effects of liberalisation on the economies of developing countries were called into question. Various econometric studies, a report by Christian Aid and the study entitled ‘Winners and losers’ by Sandra Polanski, published last week, have shown that many developing countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, would be experiencing better conditions today if we had not introduced unbridled liberalisation measures.
The Polanski study, which analyses the winners and losers in the liberalisations launched under the Doha Round, confirms data previously published by UNCTAD and the UNDP and reaches certain conclusions: developing countries will probably be the losers in the game, since they do not have the agricultural or industrial capacity to compete with the rich countries; the winners will in fact be the rich countries: the United States, Europe and Japan, and also China.
Free trade will produce modest gains at the global level, partly because the adjustment costs which countries have to deal with when they undertake the liberalisation process promoted by the industrialised countries can be greater than the benefits.
It is not a question of being against trade, since the opening up of the markets can also be an effective instrument in the fight against poverty, but like any instrument it must be used with great caution. First of all, it is necessary to put the countries in a position to meet their own internal requirements, by boosting productive capacity in line, above all, with internal goals of self-sufficiency in food, and then it is necessary to allow them to tackle competition and limitations on supply, by providing adequate resources which are currently not present in the financial perspectives.
Secondly, it is then necessary to work on the basis of realistic timetables, which take into account the time that structural adjustments require and, thirdly, it is necessary to restrict the opening up of the market, and to lay down, in addition, mechanisms for suspending the liberalisation process, if necessary, and to give the ACP countries the opportunity to protect their own incipient and strategic industries; in any case, we used this criterion ourselves throughout the last century and some in fact are still trying to put it forward again today.
These principles are almost present in the report, partly because these are the requests of the ACP countries, and it is those countries that are putting them forward. Because an effective principle of partnership requires that we take into account the requests of our partners, above all if they are justified, and above all if they are backed by civil society in Europe and in the ACP countries. Also and above all because the economic partnership agreements arise from the legal and institutional framework of the Cotonou agreement, signed by the European Union – and I underline this – and they have development and combating poverty as their ultimate goals.
On the basis of this same principle of partnership, we do not have the right to impose agreements. I believe that it is those countries that have to do it, and one of the main points in the report is the call for the Commission to carry out an immediate study of the alternatives so that the ACP countries can evaluate the options and decide whether to sign the agreements or not. The reciprocity that is being called for in the implementation of liberalisations, then, means applying equal laws to those who are not equal in economic or development terms; this is no way to produce equality or democracy.
Thinking about development solely in terms of increasing a country’s gross domestic product is very reductionist. Development is hard to define, but when in my report the Commission is called upon to protect the sectors of water, health and education from liberalisation, what we are fundamentally talking about is rights that must be guaranteed, as when the Cape Town Declaration is quoted. The ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly also has the power to set development indicators in order to assess the achievement of results and trade agreements, requesting that social and environmental indicators be included such as the creation of dignified work, health, education and gender equality."@en1
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