Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-04-03-Speech-1-186"
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"en.20060403.14.1-186"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, everyone in this Chamber is in favour of free trade; no one wants to re-create the Albania of Enver Hoxha’s time. We are therefore all in favour of multilateral rules, but which rules, and to benefit whom?
We are told that free trade benefits employment and growth. Yet, have the rules applied to trade until now made nations wealthy? Here is the answer: in Mexico, 94 free trade agreements have been signed and they have not brought about prosperity; in Ecuador, the indigenous people of the Andes are against the free trade agreement; currently, in France, three million secondary school students are demonstrating because there are no jobs; and, where I live, the wine growers are poverty-stricken, people are committing suicide and yet there is free trade.
The observation demonstrating that the current free trade rules do not lead to economic prosperity indicates two possibilities. The first possibility is that free trade is the secular name for Christianity, whereby the wine growers of Europe, the small farmers and the workers must climb onto the Cross in order to atone for their worldly sins. In that case, let us continue and, in exchange for our concessions, Brazil and India will not open up their markets, and the Anglo-Saxon world will not recognise our intellectual property rights in relation to our agricultural designations. Thus, Commissioner, we are persevering on the poverty path which, after ten rounds of GATT and WTO negotiations, has done nothing for Africa.
The other possibility is that, finally, we stop making mistakes and follow the path of subscribing not to the archaic technique of reducing or abolishing customs duties, but to the modern technique of deducting customs duties. We will make the technological leap by inventing deductible customs duties because, in the form of tax credits that are offered to exporting countries and that can be used in the importing country, we shall have customs duties that ensure economic neutrality, and we shall resolve the tragedies brought about by globalisation.
Tell Mr Mandelson that his role is not that of following in the footsteps of David Ricardo, but of having John Maynard Keynes’ capacity for invention."@en1
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