Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-03-14-Speech-3-328"
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"en.20070314.23.3-328"2
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"Mr President, free trade is no good if it is unfair, and trade defence measures are an attempt to make it fairer. I think that the Commission places a little too much emphasis on multinational companies, and I am uneasy about redefining the Community interest. I wish to clarify the fact that, if an EU-based transnational company is involved in social or environmental dumping, either for its own part or through subsidiary companies or subcontractors, it cannot be regarded as a Community interest just because it is EU-registered. It must be punished for engaging in such practices.
The Green Paper also addresses many interesting issues that we are to debate, for example increased transparency and more influence for small companies and non-governmental organisations. One important dimension is missing, however: the Green Paper is insufficiently green. The whole dimension of environmental dumping is absent. Let me remind you of paragraph 11 of the Muscardini report from October, whereby the European Parliament ‘invites the Commission to consider whether it would be appropriate to radically revise the rules on the use of trade defence … measures under the WTO aegis’, and this for the purpose of including non-compliance with global agreements and with conventions on the environment and social issues as forms of dumping or subsidy.
The fact is that countries that have weak environmental legislation or that lack the environmental taxes of their competitors must be seen as subsidising or dumping their production costs; in other words, as engaging in nothing less than traditional dumping. This will become a growing problem when the global level of ambition increases. There must, then, be no free zones for environmental destruction that undermines global environmental work. We must, for example, introduce a Kyoto tariff for countries that do not comply with the Kyoto Agreement. Other countries must be brought before the World Trade Organisation (WTO), and perhaps we shall win and perhaps we shall lose. Many believe the WTO to be a powerful organisation, but one thing is certain: the climate cares not one jot for the WTO and, if we do not introduce climate measures into trade policy, will change irrespective of what the WTO thinks.
One final comment: if we are now to have solidarity and we have a one per cent limit, when is Malta to be able to apply these defence measures and when is it to obtain more than one per cent of internal trade?"@en1
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