Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-04-03-Speech-1-177"
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"en.20060403.14.1-177"2
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".
Mr President, we are debating the report of Mr Papastamkos on the assessment of the Doha round following the WTO Ministerial Conference in Hong Kong, which took place in 2005. Even the preparations for the Conference and the action taken during that period by the Commission and the Council caused great concern in the European Parliament, especially in terms of the future of agriculture in the European Union. I should like to draw Members’ attention to two facts relating to that period.
Firstly, on 18 October, at the European Union Foreign Ministers Meeting, Commissioner Mandelson said that the European Union must make concessions to other countries during the WTO negotiations, because the European Union will gain more on the export of industrial goods and services than it will lose on weaker protection of agriculture. This statement suggested that there may be a wish to sacrifice the interests of EU agriculture in return for vague gains in other areas.
Secondly, in December 2005, before the relevant reports were adopted by the European Parliament, the Commission and the Council hastily announced a reform of the sugar market, which will probably not help the poorest countries exporting sugar to the European Union, but will deliver a painful blow to the European Union’s sugar beet growers, especially those in the new Member States.
Those two facts demonstrate that before the Hong Kong conference took place, the Commission and the Council wanted to show the world their willingness to offer concessions during the negotiations, especially in agricultural matters. As it turned out, other WTO members have shown no such far-reaching desire to offer concessions, and what is more, they have blamed the European Union for the lack of progress in the negotiations.
It seems therefore that during continued negotiations, which will take place in 2006, European Union institutions will have to abide by the following principles in relation to agriculture: concessions made during WTO negotiations must not undermine either the food self-sufficiency of the Union nor the European model of agriculture, nor its multifunctional character. Offers of agriculture concessions must be conditional and must be withdrawn if there are no satisfactory offers from other WTO partners during the negotiations that follow. Thirdly, because of the considerable reduction of duties on agricultural products, only products not associated with economic, environmental or social dumping practices should be granted free access to the European Union market, whereas agricultural products produced in conditions involving breaches of human rights and of international treaties on environmental and animal protection must be subject to additional charges or special protection clauses.
Since the costs to be incurred by European farmers in ensuring the appropriate animal welfare standards have been assessed at approximately EUR 10 billion, we must demand that animal products originating from outside the European Union meet similar standards."@en1
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