Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-09-05-Speech-2-013"
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"en.20060905.5.2-013"2
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".
Mr President, Commissioner, the suspensions of the Doha Round negotiations is first and foremost the breaking of a promise to adjust the balance of trade rules to benefit developing countries. It represents a triumph of the narrow interests of some countries over the broader interest of the international community and, like the chairman of the Committee on International Trade, we are all, of course, thinking about the mid-term elections due to take place in the United States.
The suspension already potentially threatens the multilateral system as the main framework of trade negotiations and a return to more imbalanced bilateral negotiations that will act to the detriment of the poorest, and in particular the smallest, countries, as you pointed out, Mr Mandelson. Furthermore, it will leave the multilateral system in place, which will not disappear, though the idea was to begin to reform it and make it more compatible with the objectives of development and with the other rules of the international community: namely the need to take on board the objectives of public health, the environment, and tomorrow – we hope – the social dimension of globalisation.
The main losers of this suspension of the round of negotiations will be developing countries, and, of those, the least advanced countries in particular. Irrespective of the shortcomings and the limitations, what was on the table, and what was being proposed by the EU – which was often, indeed, what Parliament wanted to see – will be jeopardised, will be lost: the abolition of export subsidies by 2013, free access, as regards rights and quotas, for products from the least developed countries to the markets of the developed countries, even though the problem remained of the 3% tariff lines that a number of other industrialised countries had sought, increased access to the markets of industrialised countries for all agricultural production in developing countries, even though the US proposals fall well short of what is required, addressing the situation of cotton producers, the trade-related assistance package, and the amendment to the Trade Agreement on Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) on access to medicines.
I welcome the fact, Commissioner, that you are simply announcing that you are once again going to set forth in search of peace, to meet again with the G20 and the United States and to attempt to find ways to return to the negotiating table. We must not, in my view, allow the Doha Round to die. Whatever the difficulties posed by the expiry of the authorisation to negotiate granted by Congress to the US administration, we must not allow the undertakings and the promises that had been made simply to be thrown out of the window, and I am delighted to hear that, for its part, the EU will honour its commitments and keep its promises.
We should perhaps return simply to the heart of the Round and remind our partners from the industrialised countries that we knew that it would not be based on reciprocity, and that we would have to offer more in the way of access for agricultural products than we would gain via industrial tariffs and the opening up of markets and services. Europe must continue to promote the multilateral system. It certainly needs to be reformed so that there can remain a framework of confidence between developing and developed countries. After all, it is within the multilateral system that the developing countries can continue to be heard via the G20 and the G90, and that the trade rules can be made more compatible with the aims of eradicating poverty and with all of the other rules of the multilateral system."@en1
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