Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-05-31-Speech-3-114"
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"en.20060531.13.3-114"2
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"Mr President, my group is in favour of strengthening trade activity with the USA, just as much as we support the extension of trade in goods with Africa, South America or Australia. However, in her report Mrs Mann calls, in her own words, for ‘a barrier-free transatlantic market’, and that is a free trade zone.
Trade should not be an end in itself for the purpose of higher profit rates, but one of the instruments for ensuring that the population is supplied with goods and services, for creating jobs and promoting social development and prosperity. We should therefore first of all assess whether the potential partner complies with internationally agreed standards on the protection of social security, jobs, environment and human rights and whether or not the partner accepts the institutions created to safeguard these.
Three brief examples: Firstly, there are fundamentally different opinions about GMOs and hormone-treated meat. The citizens of the European Union do not want these things. In the USA however it is absolutely legal to trade in them.
Secondly, while public services and comprehensive social security systems are basic parts of political culture in the European Union, this is viewed differently in the USA. I ask you: How, in such an integrated economic area, can these things, which are of such importance to, and in the interests of, the public and the European Union, be preserved?
Thirdly, does it, or does it not, distort competition if the USA does not sign the Kyoto Protocol? Of course it does, for they can then produce more cheaply to the detriment of the environment. As for the decisions of the WTO arbitration court on such things as cotton export subsidies, the USA simply ignores them.
To conclude: this House recently adopted the Agnoletto report, which clearly states that the European Union should include a clause on human rights in all treaties with third countries. The USA makes war in Iraq in contravention of international law; it does not recognise the International Criminal Court; it holds prisoners of war in inhuman conditions in prisons like the one in Guantánamo Bay.
I believe that this Parliament will lose all credibility whatsoever if it moves towards a free trade zone with the USA, without the USA having previously complied with internationally agreed standards and norms."@en1
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