Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-01-17-Speech-3-243"
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"en.20070117.13.3-243"2
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".
Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, we are discussing the revision of a complex agreement, the Cotonou Agreement, which contains 100 articles, 6 parts, 5 annexes and 5 protocols. This revised agreement contains the whole catalogue of today’s politics, with human rights, democracy, terrorism, arms, the International Criminal Court. All the ACP countries need now is REACH, since they risk being victims of the regulation on chemical products, with losses of income and 315 000 jobs under threat. Metals, alcohol, oils, ammonia, which are exported from 24 major ACP countries, will be hit by REACH, representing a potential loss of income of EUR 6 billion for those countries.
That takes us to the real truth about Europe's relations with the ACP countries over the last thirty years. From the Yaoundé agreement of 1963 up to the Cotonou Agreement of 2000, revised in 2005, and the Lomé I, II, III and IV agreements from 1975 onwards, it appears that Europe has been audacious, particularly with the Stabex mechanism, which has protected cocoa, tea, coffee and groundnuts. This demonstrates the spirit of the compensatory inequalities of the CNUCED. Europe has also been generous by means of financial aid from the EDF. Mr Barrot pointed out that there is an allocation of around EUR 25 billion for the 79 ACP countries in the 9th EDF.
The reality is different, however. According to the figures, the ACP countries’ share in the Union market has dropped from 6.7% in 1976 to 3% in 1998, and while the GDP of a European increased by an average of 2.3% per year, that of an African from an ACP country, if I dare say it, increased by just 0.6%. In terms of actions too, Europe has forgotten about the ACP countries, just as it has forgotten about the Mediterranean. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, Europe has been interested in the East, but no longer in the South. And what is worse, with the WTO, Europe has swallowed up the ACP countries in the world market, as we have seen in the case of sugar and bananas. The multinational banana producer Chiquita has been given preference over Cameroon, which produces bananas, and the Ivory Coast. Ultra-liberal Europe has chosen to make a customs gift of around EUR 2 billion to the multinationals Chiquita, Del Monte and others, rather than to the ACP countries, which have to face the same competition conditions as these multinationals.
Cotonou, with its talk of democracy and dialogue, is all very well, but when people have AIDS, human rights are not going to cure them. In other words, rather than being revised, the Cotonou Agreement should be re-worked so as to be audacious in two respects. Firstly, technical audacity through a new customs technology: rather than seeking, within the World Trade Organisation, to reduce, and eventually abolish, customs duties, we must establish a deduction of customs duties in the form of a customs credit deductible on all purchases in the economy of the importing country. This customs credit would be reimbursable, that is to say, it would be higher than the sum of the customs duty paid, for example by the ACP country. With new customs duties that are flexible, reimbursable and negotiable on the world stock market, Europe-ACP relations would be consistent with the necessary free trade and the equally necessary protection of the ACP countries.
Secondly, we should show political audacity in a reworked Cotonou Agreement. With globalisation, the challenge of the 21st century consists in organising the common aspects of planetary co-ownership – that is to say, water, food, basic medicines and vaccines and education – all with a resource other than the classic State contribution of the EDF, a fiscal resource such as VAT based on the turnover of telecommunications services provided by space satellites. In this case, we would no longer provide improved assistance in the name of co-development, but we would gradually move towards global land management. That would restore the spirit of Lomé, and we would finally begin to build the world, which is the challenge of the 21st century."@en1
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