Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-03-22-Speech-3-207"
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"en.20060322.16.3-207"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, we in this House have already, on a number of occasions and with a large degree of unanimity, reached agreement on the Millennium Development Goals and have flagged up the elimination of poverty from our planet as our most important task over the coming decades.
Mrs Morgantini’s excellent report has now provided us with an assessment of the contribution economic partnership agreements can make to actually achieving this task. We expect the Commission to give clear priority to development and the elimination of poverty in the ACP countries in the negotiations. The criticism that I am about to make is clearly aimed at the appearance of a representative of DG Trade at a hearing of the Committee on Development. Let me be quite clear about this: we do not want negotiations that reflect the style and behaviour of a colonial power; we believe that the decision-making sovereignty of our partners in the ACP countries must be preserved.
This sovereignty should be encouraged by investment in trade infrastructure, and, of course, by means of support for national strategies to combat poverty, which is fully in line with the principle of subsidiarity so prized in the EU. If governments exercise their sovereignty by deciding to view the economic partnership agreements with scepticism, then there have to be alternatives such as those offered by the Cotonou Agreement. That is why I wonder why the Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats wishes to delete that reference. Why does the PPE-DE Group suddenly no longer feel bound by agreements? The PPE-DE Group is also seeking to delete virtually every sentence from the report that gives the ACP governments negotiating sovereignty and their own political room for manoeuvre as to whether liberalisation should be implemented in a given sector, to what extent and in what time frame. Why, I would like to know?
The Morgantini report calls for basic provision with drinking water, education and other key public services to be excluded from liberalisation from the outset. The PPE-DE Group wishes this to be deleted, and instead calls for the liberalisation of the water sector to be based on affordable prices. I regard that as pure cynicism. Given the widespread poverty in many parts of the ACP countries, that is simply not acceptable. I urge you to reject these amendments tomorrow."@en1
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