Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-09-06-Speech-3-332"
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"en.20060906.23.3-332"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, Mr Belder, as chairman of Parliament’s delegation for China, I am left with rather mixed feelings about this report. The rapporteur has worked very hard, and the report contains many valid points made or repeated by this House, but what is missing, in my opinion, is an assessment, a critical and constructive assessment of what the Commission is already doing in China at the moment. How critical are we about some of the things the Commission is doing over there? After all, it boasts a very extensive delegation over there, second only – or so I believe – to that for relations with the United States.
Where are we offering the Commission encouragement? For example, is there sufficient cooperation between China and the Commission in the area of regional policy, the development of China’s disadvantaged regions? We could teach them a thing or two in this respect. Are we working together sufficiently and could we not, for example, ask the Chinese Government to be a little more receptive to this?
Those are the kinds of things that are missing. There is insufficient scrutiny or critical and/or constructive analysis of the activities the Commission is engaged in. What suggestions are we putting forward for the Helsinki summit? My mixed feelings stem from the fact that those are not reflected anywhere.
I am pleased that you are facing the problems head-on. Since Members have already pointed them out, I will not dwell on the issues of human rights, trade union rights, the free expression of opinion and so on.
I am not that enthralled by the way you are asking for EU-US consensus on China policy. That would make me very unhappy. In fact, we in our group have tabled amendments on this very subject, because there are differences between us, the European Union, and the United States, as to how to approach China. There are also different interests in play. We should not ask for consensus with the United States after all, for I think that would restrict us enormously in our policy.
Moreover, China is not just any old country. We can pretend that the Chinese only need us, but we should not labour under any misconceptions: we need the Chinese as well, both economically and strategically. Let there be no mistake about that, Commissioner. I assume that the one-China policy is a cornerstone of the stability which we would like to see across the whole of Asia, and that it is also a cornerstone and an elementary component in the EU’s policy in respect of China. I cannot find any extensive detail about this in this report. We are assuming all kinds of things, but we as Parliament should also confirm the one-China policy, because it is important for the sake of stability.
China needs us where the environment is concerned, for example. I think that that country could take on board a huge number of suggestions from us, including in the area of energy.
As far as conditions for partnership are concerned, it has to be said that every day, some minister or other, commissioner of a region or a country, sets off for China in order to discuss this strategic partnership over there. We should therefore stop pretending that it does not exist and that we can simply prescribe whatever conditions we please."@en1
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