Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-03-14-Speech-3-324"
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"en.20070314.23.3-324"2
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"Mr President, Mr Mandelson, trade defence instruments – the name is quite revealing: an instrument for defending ourselves against trade. To protect ourselves against trade would be both expensive and stupid, however, and there are therefore few economists who make a habit of supporting the use of this instrument. I myself have on more than one occasion here in Parliament talked, for example, about the way in which consumers are forced to pay astronomically high prices for a limited producer interest. The fact is, however, that, in the future too, we shall have some form of trade defence instrument. Until such time as we have common competition legislation right around the world, all countries will probably feel a need to protect themselves against what they perceive as unfair trade. I therefore believe that we need to design the instrument now so that it is legitimate and viewed as such by everyone – producers, importers, consumers and all the Member States.
We must get away from the predictable conflicts pitting North against South and producers against importers and consumers, as the conflicts in themselves undermine confidence in the instrument and, in the longer term, in EU trade policy. If we are to have any consensus surrounding these trade defence instruments, we must do more to emulate competition legislation. Everyone I meet demands, for example, more transparency, more predictability and, above all, less political horse-trading on this issue. I can understand them, as it is frankly ridiculous that the Member States should only be given a few days in which to assess thousands of pages prior to decisions on anti-dumping duties. The fact that, in Brussels, we have an army of consultants who run around in pursuit of rumours of Commission proposals concerning new defence measures is ridiculous too, as is the political horse-trading whereby duties on shoes can be exchanged for exemptions from the working time directive – exemptions that, in turn, can be exchanged for duties on Norwegian salmon. All this shows that a fundamental overhaul is required.
What is more, the world has changed. As global duties become bound and lower, more of our trading partners use instruments to prevent the import of goods in the traditional way, and, given that Europe is the biggest actor in the world market, we must show leadership. I should therefore like to conclude by asking you how we are to ensure that this reform does not, in actual fact, continue down the road of seriously becoming one that Frédéric Bastiat, for example, would characterise in terms of cutting off our nose to spite our face."@en1
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